Sri Lanka Planetarium
ශ්‍රී ලංකා ග්‍රහලෝකාගාරය
Established1 February 1965 (1965-02-01)
LocationProf. Stanley Wijesundaran Mawatha, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka.
TypePlanetarium
DirectorK. Arunu Perera[1]
ArchitectA. N. S. Kulasinghe
Websitewww.planetarium.gov.lk

Sri Lanka Planetarium (Sinhala: ශ්‍රී ලංකා ග්‍රහලෝකාගාරය) is a public planetarium located in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is the first and only planetarium in the country and maintained as an institute under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Research.[2]

The Planetarium was established on 1 February 1965 by the State Engineering Corporation as a special feature for the Ceylon industrial exhibition held in Colombo same year.[3][4] The planetarium was designed by the chief engineer from the State Engineering Corporation of Ceylon, A. N. S. Kulasinghe, and was constructed by engineers from Germany.[5] The building takes elements from the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (Sir Frederick Gibberd - 1960) and the Cathedral of Brasília (Oscar Niemeyer - 1960).[6] The building has a reinforced concrete floor and a pre-stressed concrete folded plate roof, which was pre-cast on-site.[6] The building was funded by the German Democratic Republic as a gift to Ceylon. The planetarium is 21.33 m (70.0 ft) high and 37.8 m (124 ft) in diameter.

The building was refurbished in 2014 at a cost of Rs 200 million and re-opened to the public on 9 December.[7]

The planetarium has a digital fully-spherical projector stationed at the centre of the building, which projects an artificial sky on the 23 m (75 ft) diameter dome above a 570-seat auditorium.[8] The universal projector is a product of Carl Zeiss AG East Germany.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Sri Lanka Planetarium to re-open on 7th July". 4 July 2020.
  2. ↑ "INSTITUTIONS#Planetarium". www.motr.gov.lk. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
  3. ↑ "Our Planetarium". www.planetarium.gov.lk. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
  4. ↑ International Symposium on Innovative World of Concrete (ICI-IWC-93), August 30-September 3, 1993, Bangalore, India: Proceedings. Vol. 1. Oxford & IBH Publishing Company. 1993. p. 1-32. ISBN 9788120408432.
  5. ↑ "Planetarium". Amazinglanka. September 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
  6. 1 2 Pieris, Anoma (2013). Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka: The Trouser Under the Cloth. Routledge. p. 164. ISBN 9780415630023.
  7. ↑ "Modernised planetarium opens". The Daily Mirror. 5 December 2014. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  8. ↑ "Sri Lanka Planetarium with enhanced technology to be opened today". News First. 5 December 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
  9. ↑ "Sri Lanka Planetarium". World Planetariums Database. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.