Now, grab your tickets to space right from Kolkata

KOLKATA: For 53 years, children visiting MP Birla Planetarium have been captivated by images of planets, stars and constellations magically appear on the dome.
From Friday, audiences will embark on a 43-minute cosmic journey on board a spaceship that will take off from the planetarium at 6.30pm every day.


In a first-of-its-kind custom made show packaged by MP Birla Planetarium and German optical systems manufacturer Carl Zeiss, the sandstoneencased brick & mortar planetarium will transform into a virtual spaceship and take off with the audience during the evening English show titled ‘Our Unviverse’.

“Audiences will see the actual picture of the planetarium with the four gantries used during the launch of spaceship. On countdown, the entire planetarium will appear to lift off, leaving behind Kolkata. The city will gradually fade away and the spaceship enters space for an indepth look at planets,” said MP Birla Planetarium director (research & academics) Debiprosad Duari.

On the visit to Mars, audiences can see lava spew from its volcanoes. Later, they can sense travelling through Saturn's rings before travelling beyond the solar system and stars to gradually exit the galaxy.

Thereafter, the spaceship will do the return journey, deploying a large parachute as as it approaches the earth and glide down softly to the planetarium site on Jawaharlal Nehru Road-Queen’s Way junction.

“One of the key aspect of the show's content is that it is both informative for the general public and extremely academic depiction of the solar system, of stellar worlds and even beyond the Milky Way Galaxy for students and astronomically oriented visitors. The information and images of each of the planets as the imaginary spacecraft fly past them will be up to date keeping in sync with the latest observations of the large telescopes observing the sky at present,” said Duari.

The content took five months to develop at Carl Zeiss’s headquarters in Jena. Germany. Carl Zeiss had also provided the nine state-of-theart ultra-modern velvet projectors during the planetarium's modernisation. Such advanced projection system is used either in planeterium or in rocket simulators.

Initially, there will be only one show daily in English. Later, shows dubbed in Bengali and Hindi will be added.