The pleasantly modest MP Birla Planetarium in Kolkata
India has nineteen planetaria (if you insist on that plural), China three. What does that tell us, if anything? Both countries have long traditions of astronomy: China, India.
India’s are in Allahabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gorakhpur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi (two), Patna, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirappalli.
China’s are in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, so in the whole of China “proper” there is only one, at least according to Wikipedia. (This blog has few readers in China, many in India.)
Bangladesh has one, in Dhaka. Pakistan two, in Karachi and Lahore. Sri Lanka, where Arthur C Clarke lived, one, in Colombo. Japan thirty-one. Korea apparently none. Africa three, but only one between Alexandria and Johannesburg: in Accra. Italy, Spain, Poland, Mexico many. The UK many, but in 2006 the London Planetarium (opened 1958, its high dome unlike any other I can think of) was closed and the space linked to Madame Tussauds. Shows about celebrities and others replaced astronomical projections.
This was five years after the removal of elephants from London Zoo. Scenes of ’60s childhood memories. Battersea Funfair closed in 1974.
A new planetarium opened in Greenwich in 2007.
Modern planetariums used to depend on technology developed by Zeiss in Jena, but many are now digital. The first public Zeiss cosmic projection was at the Deutsches Museum in Munich on October 21 1923.
Planetarium in Berlin, 1939, Deutsches Bundesarchiv (did the lower part of the design give the idea for extraterrestrial insect invaders in the ’50s, the upper the idea for Daleks in the ’60s?)
February 5 2012 at 7:57 pm
The development of astronomical research in India owes much to development of mathematics in southern India and of Greek science in Bactria. Ulug Beg took up the crumbs of Greco-Iranian-India-Chinese science in Kushana and put them all together in his schools of mathematics and astronomy in Samarkand. Copernicus got the message from faraway Europe, the rest is European history.
February 5 2012 at 8:05 pm
Fascinating connections, Giovanni. Thanks.
You remind me how unambitious this blog is when I am busy.
February 6 2012 at 8:24 am
Ulughbeg did indeed provide a sound footing for observational astronomy, before his violent deposition, but Tycho Brahe wound up replicating much of the work: it is really to him we should give credit for the data that allowed for a revolution in thinking on mechanics.
The Jantar Mantars of Jaipur are a fascinating architectural record of this phase of observational astronomy.
And the Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maps exactly onto your analysis of current trends: it has a Zeiss, which is now hardly ever used, and a 7-projector digital system that mostly shows educational movies on a legacy dome screen, and sometimes uses it for pop videos and other kinds of ephemeral “happenings”.
Two revolutions of the past 10 years threaten planetaria in the same way cinema everywhere has been threatened of late: first you can buy inflatable portable planetaria, which are noisy, fascinating bits of small-scale engineering, and really great for “star parties” and other kinds of event-based astronomy teaching. Second and more importantly there’s a whole bunch of software apps out there now that allow you to fly around the solar system or galaxy or known space on your computer desktop. These are actually much more open and informative than planetarium shows, and quite a few are free.
Still, I like a good, crisp, clear Zeiss space presentation, with a live interpreter. I will miss them.
February 6 2012 at 10:08 am
Thanks. I have seen the Jantar Mantar and the remains of Ulughbeg’s observatory. The list I quote from supposedly excludes sites housing portable planetaria.
If you know of any decent software, pls tell me. Much of it is unthrilling. I hope the real thing will survive, as cinemas do.
AJT, vol II, for the record:
“Timur’s grandson, Ulugh Beg (regnabat A.D. 1447-9) made his fame before he ascended the throne by building an observatory at Samarqand in A.D. 1421 and organizing the compilation of a set of astronomical tables which were completed in 1437/8.”
February 5 2012 at 8:15 pm
There were elephants in London from 1831 to 2001.
The elephant given by Louis IX to Henry III for his menagerie in the Tower in 1255 was the first elephant seen in England since Claudius’s war elephant in AD 43.
Planetariums are, in a minor way, modern churches.
Melvyn Bragg audio discussion on Indian mathematics.
February 6 2012 at 7:43 pm
Would you believe that I wrote Copernicus meaning to write Tycho Brahe? I didn’t correct, since the point was to say the West soon after.