The Adler Planetarium, built in Chicago in 1930, was the first major planetarium in the United States.Ī concave metal sphere known as a star ball used 31 lenses to show images of 4,500 stars on the dome. This device known as Mark I, installed at the Deutsches Museum in Munich by the German firm Carl Zeiss, was mounted inside a dome 32 feet (10 m) in diameter. The first modern planetarium was built at the Zeiss optical works in Jena, Germany, about 1924. Similar kinds of orreries were later built at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As the orrery ran, a rider could see a simulation of the planets' revolution around the sun from Earth's perspective. Below the globe representing Earth was a small, motor-driven platform that an individual could ride. The rods were fixed to motor-driven cars that traveled along "orbital" tracks around the globe. Smaller lighted globes represented the planets and the smaller globes were suspended from the ceiling by rods. The first of these was installed in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, in the early 1920s.Īt the center of a circular room was a large lighted globe, which represented the sun. To this day, small orreries are used by science teachers, because they help students understand the movements of the planets.Īfter the invention of electric lights and motors in the late 19th century, it became feasible to build large orreries. In the early 18th century, a model planetarium known as an orrerynamed for the Earl of Orrery, an Irish nobleman who had one made in 1712was built. Additional projection devices are used for depicting such phenomena as eclipses, auroras, or meteors, and for showing such aids to instruction as the system of celestial coordinates or outlines of the constellations. The planetarium can also show the appearance of the heavens from any given place on Earth at any given time far into the past or future. By means of various sets of gears and electric motors, the planetarium can show the rising and setting of the stars and the motion of the moon and planets along the ecliptic. The images of the moon and planets are produced by separate projection devices mounted on a frame between the two star spheres. The plates are positioned around two spherical structures, one for Northern Hemisphere stars and the other for Southern Hemisphere stars. The room or building in which such an instrument is housed is also called a planetarium.Ī typical planetarium forms images of the stars by focusing light from one or more bright lamps through thousands of tiny holes drilled through metal plates. It projects images of the planets, moon, and stars onto a domed ceiling, creating an accurate representation of the nighttime sky. A modern planetarium is a complex optical instrument. Planetarium, is an educational device for showing the locations and movements of the planets and other objects in the universe. A planetarium is an educational device that shows the locations and movements of the planets and other objects in the universe.
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