Penza Planetarium, Astronomical observatory in Belinsky Park, Penza, Russia
Penza Planetarium is a public scientific venue inside Belinsky Park, where a dome-shaped theater lets visitors watch projections of the night sky and space events. Several exhibition halls in the building display meteorites, models of space stations, and instruments used to study the cosmos.
The institution was founded in 1928 as a People's Observatory, long before it had any projection equipment. Its first planetarium device arrived in 1954, and a fully new building opened in 2023.
The name of the place comes from the Latin word for wandering star, which is exactly what visitors come to watch projected across the dome above them. School groups from across the region visit regularly, making it one of the main places where children in Penza first encounter astronomy.
The building is inside Belinsky Park, which is centrally located and easy to find on foot from much of the city. Visitors should plan enough time to see both the dome shows and the exhibition halls, as each offers a different experience.
Inside the building stands a full-size replica of the quadrant used by Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century Central Asian astronomer who mapped stars with remarkable accuracy without any telescope. Visitors can get close to the replica and see how such an instrument actually worked in practice.
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