Menke-Planetarium, Planetarium in Glücksburg, Germany

The Menke-Planetarium stands in Glücksburg's Sandwig district at Fördestraße 37, beside the Quellental. Its dome measures six metres across and seats 50 visitors; since 2011 a Digistar 7 system with two HD projectors has replaced the original Zeiss ZKP 1 projector. Behind it, on a neighbouring rise, the observatory has two towers: one holds a Meade LX200 telescope of about 40 cm, the other a 60 cm Kutter tri-schiefspiegler built by Rademacher.

Physicist Josef Ferdinand Menke built the planetarium in the mid-1960s and opened it in 1969, adding an observatory for his firm Elektro Optik GmbH. After Menke died in May 1995, Flensburg University of Applied Sciences took over operation in November 1995; the heirs donated the site in 2000. At the turn of 2018/19 it returned to the Menke/Jargstorf family, and the university continues to use it under a lease.

The Förderverein Sternfreunde Flensburg/Glücksburg, founded around 1996, maintains and runs the facility and may use the observatory telescopes free of charge; in 2019 it had 120 members. The planetarium has served school classes and public adult events since it opened in 1969.

Plan your visit for clear nights when the observatories are open for sky viewing. It helps to check ahead which shows and sessions are running on your preferred date.

The observatory's larger instrument is a 60 cm mirror with a focal length of 8.90 m, a Tri-Schiefspiegler designed by Anton Kutter and built by the firm Rademacher. It is the largest Kutter Tri-Schiefspiegler ever constructed, and meetings of the Kutter Schiefspiegler community are held in Biberach, Kutter's birthplace.