Press Release

NAS RA V. Ambartsumian Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO)
Press release 26.10.2023

100 YEARS OF THE FIRST PLANETARIUM

It’s the centenary of the very first planetarium.

In 1913, Oskar von Miller, the founder of the Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in Munich, conceived an idea for a device that could illustrate the apparent movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. He approached ZEISS for suggestions on creating such a planetarium. However, World War I interrupted the progress of this project.

In March 1919, Walther Bauersfeld, a member of the Carl Zeiss Jena Board of Management, unveiled a new design for a projection planetarium. He, along with his team, began working on the intricate details of the project. The long-awaited moment finally arrived in October 1923 when the artificial sky lit up in the Deutsches Museum for the first time, far exceeding expectations. On 7 May 1925, the ZEISS Planetarium in the Deutsches Museum in Munich began operation. Subsequent developments ranged further to Model IX and projectors for small and medium dome sizes. Later, ZEISS equipped its planetariums with computer-aided control systems and developed fiber optics to depict the night skies more brilliantly than ever. The evolution of ZEISS planetariums, which can now be found all over the world, eventually led to the VELVET video projector – featuring superior contrast for perfect full-dome projection and to the UNIVIEW software suite for all types of digital projection content.

Meline Asryan