Centennial Projects – Centennial of the Planetarium

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Launch Event

The anniversary year will be opened on October 21, 2023 in a joint, parallel celebration at Planetarium Jena and at Deutsches Museum in Munich. Both venues will be connected live throughout the event, and the event will be presented in a joint moderation dialogue between both sites.

Poster Contest

On the occasion of Centennial, we would like to encourage the creation of digital artwork around the theme!

Create a poster that interprets the Centennial of the Planetarium from an artistic perspective. All techniques, photography, painting, graphics, or digital tools are acceptable. We want to make a “best of” of all submitted works available to planetariums worldwide for display and to promote Centennial activities. The best submissions will be selected by an IPS jury and presented at the Centennial Opening Ceremony in October 2023.

Music Album

One hundred years ago, planetariums opened up to the world, the stars were only the beginning.
In 2023 the world opens up to planetariums to celebrate this centenary.
For the first time in the world, discover the event album: “Planetarium
Century”
Captivating, hovering, planetariums now have their own music!
3 musicians, one movement: the berlin school and cosmic music in the spotlight.
Emmanuel Quenneville, Kurtz Mindfields, Sequentia Legenda.
They compose the sky for you.
“Planetarium Century”, listen to the stars.

Centennial Book

From various approaches for an anniversary book, the IPS working group selected the concept “100 years in 100 objects”: The history of the planetarium will be presented in “100” symbolic objects, each of which is presented in image and text; explaining the significance of the object. It will feature “obvious” objects (e.g. the Zeiss “model 1”) as well as purely symbolic objects (e.g. a historical admission ticket).

Fulldome Shorts Contest

Fifteen fulldome clips from twelve authors were submitted to the competition. We would like to thank the jury for reviewing and evaluating all the entries. The winners have been selected and will be announced at the opening and celebration event on October 21.

Supplementary Packages

The Supplementary Packages for Planetariums will contain a variety of materials to support planetariums worldwide in many aspects of communicating the content of the anniversary.

Local Projects Contest

The Planetarium Centennial celebration must be a global celebration. Thus we encourage every Planetarian: Hold your own event in celebration of the Centennial!
This could be a Centennial-themed celebration of the anniversary of your own planetarium; a Centennial-themed concert or other cultural event, or an activity or presentation of your planetarium to be offered on the annual day of planetariums, May 7th – just to name a few examples. Certainly there are could be many more ideas, depending on your region and municipality!

Fulldome Trailer

A video trailer for the Centennial is already available on Youtube and on our website.

In addition, also a fulldome format trailer was produced by artist Rocco Helmchen, financed by IPS.

The fulldome trailer was first shown at the Brno fulldome festival in June 2022, and is now available and free to use by planetariums and other fulldome venues.

Poster Exhibition

To allow all planetariums in the world to present an easy-to-copy exhibition about the history of the planetarium, IPS had designed a series of about 20 posters with information about the invention of the first planetarium projectors, the diverse history of the planetarium, and its contemporary role.

These posters are made available digitally to all planetariums to be self-printed and exhibited.

UNESCO Campaign

An application for the entry of “the planetariums” in the German national UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage was submitted on November 30th, 2021. Strictly speaking, it is not the planetariums that are suggested for this entry, but the educational work done there with its specific methods as a “special form of culture”. The preparation of this application included obtaining two supporting reports from independent experts, for which we collaborated with IAU Commission C4 “world heritage and astronomy”.

KIRA – Fulldome Show

The production of an anniversary show is the biggest project of the anniversary year. This anniversary show is not intended to be an “ordinary” planetarium show (narrated from the off, entirely or almost entirely CGI), but is intended to be particularly innovative through the involvement of actors, with a focus on good dialogues.

The premiere of the show is scheduled to take place at the opening of the anniversary year, on October 21, 2023.

At a later time, there will be more news on this page on show posters, trailers, shipment, and more.

Kids on Stars

This project will collect interviews with children from different countries expressing their views of the planetarium, its invention, and its future. So far, three such videos have been produced with children from Costa Rica, Brazil and Germany.

We would like to hear more about the future planetarium, from the children in your country! If you can create your own interview, let us know! – there is no specific requirement on length, image details, or else… every contribution will be an important addition!

Commemorative Stamp

GDP’s suggestion for a special German mail stamp was accepted by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and is now published.
The Ministry will officially present the stamp in the Jena Zeiss-Planetarium on Wednesday, October 18, at 11:30. Anyone interested in the presentation is cordially invited to Jena.
Stamp issue date is October 5th.

We hope that this project can serve as a model for similar, official commemorative stamps or coins also in other countries – maybe in 2025, to celebrate the planetarium Centennial in this way also in your country?

100 Years of Eternity

“100 Years of Eternity” is a 35 min. long planetarium show on the cultural history of the planetarium.

It premiered simultaneously in Jena and Munich on 21st of October 2023 on the occasion of the centennial of the projection planetarium. It has been written and created by Tobias Wiethoff on behalf of GDP.

Closing Event

As we approach the 100th anniversary of planetariums on May 7, 2025, our goal is to make this a truly worldwide celebration. Planetariums have inspired curiosity and discovery for a century, connecting people across cultures and continents through a shared love of the cosmos.

This milestone isn’t just about looking back-it’s about bringing communities together to celebrate the past, present, and future of planetariums. From local events to global collaborations, we invite everyone to take part, whether by hosting an event, submitting a short video greeting, or sharing the excitement in their own unique way.

Other projects that were implemented but do not fall into any of the above categories are:

Abrafaxe Comic Book about the History of the Planetarium by Publisher Mosaik

Coordinator: Jörg Fiedler
This project with the German publisher “Mosaik” is to produce a comic style book about the invention and early history of the planetarium. Originally this was conceived as a comic book series within this publisher’s very successful larger comic series, in German, followed by a collection book in English and other languages. In 2021, the publisher decided not to publish a series, but to directly produce a book. While the publisher is fully responsible for all aspects of their production, the GDP Centennial group assists them with history information and further background information.
Unfortunately, our esteemed member Jörg Fiedler passed away in the early stages of this project, which is why it was never implemented.

Domecasting Series

Coordinator: Björn Voss, Tobias Wiethoff
Domecasting is a type of planetarium presentation in which a 360° image is streamed live and shown simultaneously in 360° in other planetariums. Using this technology, we plan to organize talks by famous speakers on astronomy and other science topics, visualized in 360°. This is however not limited to science visualization, but also cultural events can be shared in this immersive way. As a pilot project for the Centennial, a concert involving musicians on multiple continents playing synchronized and transmitted in 360° is in preparation.

Historical Online Archive

Coordinator: Cora Braun
What‘s the idea?
Creating a detailed interactive timeline / archive which presents the history of the planetarium from multiple perspectives to preserve the history in a contemporary way, serving the general public and scientists as a solid source of information.
Some of these perspectives may be:
·Technology and technological change (analog to digital)
·Content aspects
·Influences from related media (technologies)
·Architectural designs
·Emphasis on different regions or continents
·…
What are the target groups?
·general public interested in planetariums and their history
·professionals from the planetarium community
·scientific community (including scientists, e.g. history, media &
communication science, art and other disciplines, & students)
What will this look like?
Different important historical events and Planetarium-related terms & ideas may
be gathered and summarized in short, lexicon-styled entries. Entries should meet
scientific standards to be citable. Each entry is tagged with multiple hashtags.
Those might be categories like Technology, Architecture, Content, visual
language, related media and also (if available) a date or timeframe. These
hashtags can be used to search systematically for specific entries of interest. The
search results can be presented in a timeline-based style or in an alphabetic
sequence like in encyclopedias.
How does this idea support the Centennial activities?
As we like to highlight the planetarium as a modern and versatile institution
during the festivities, it makes sense to take a look back and see where we‘ve
come from. Especially the history of the planetarium is strongly driven by new
technologies and ideas from other immersive media. But the newer the
technology, the less documentation on these systems and ideas can be found.
Especially these more recent parts of the history shape the look and feel of today‘s planetariums. By highlighting relevant historic events we can emphasize the
core message of the centennial.
Why should this meet scientific standards?
Meeting scientific standards is no rocket science but would have a huge impact
for scientific work related to planetariums. Some parts of history are already covered well but especially the more recent history needs a boost in
documentation. Above the recent history had the biggest influence on what
planetariums are today – modern and definitely not outdated! By providing a
comprehensive summary on different aspects of history we can support research
in planetarium-related contexts, which everyone of the community can benefit
from. One might discuss details on the scientific standards later, but all entries
should at least provide a headline, the authors name, the release date and a list
of used references. A digital object identifier (DOI) and further readings are
worthwhile for scientific contexts.
The goal is to create a low-threshold, participatory community science-project, where
everyone can contribute his*her knowledge of a specific topic. Once a solid base
is provided, specific topics and events can be added.
The Project is currently under construction. If you‘re interested or like to get
involved in the detailed planning, contact us at GDP or at the IPS History of the
Planetrium Working Group (HotPWG).

Inauguration of the International Day of the Planetariums

Coordinator: Björn Voss
There was already an annual day of the planetariums in earlier years, celebrated in March. It was now discussed and decided in IPS to move this day to May 7th, beginning from 2024. In the anniversary year, on May 7th, 2024, we will thus celebrate the “birthday of the planetarium” for the first time on this date, which will be the 99th birthday of the planetariums. This will be a milestone and a prominent event in the festival year; the exact content is still to be decided.
The 100th birthday will of course follow on May 7th, 2025, which will at the same time be the conclusion and “main event” of the Centennial.
On May 7th, 2026, the 101st birthday will be celebrated, and so on in the subsequent years, as an annual “Planetarium Day”. In those subsequent years, this day will have the function to draw public attention to the planetariums through joint activities of all planetariums on this day.

On the Road – A Centennial Travelling Exhibition

Coordinator: Board of the GDP
GDP is preparing a small exhibition that will travel to cities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and be shown in public places such as shopping malls or other event locations with access to the general public. The intention of this exhibition is to present the modern planetarium to persons who are not familiar with planetariums.
The exhibition will include a small projection dome, to illustrate typical content that modern planetariums present to their audiences, as well as physical exhibits to raise the interest in the topic and multimedia applications to explain the history and current technology of planetariums.
The exhibition is currently in preparation, and will be presented in a first location in late 2023 or 2024.
Maybe it can serve as a template for similar exhibitions that might be created and presented in your region of the world? Please contact us if you like to hear more!

What the Stars Are Saying – Celebrities share their Planetarium Stories

Coordinator: Andreas Schmidt
The aim of this project is to obtain short video messages from celebrities, in which they share positive thoughts or views concerning the planetarium – what they think of it, what they appreciate about it, a recent relevant experience in a planetarium, … – the objective being that positive quotes from celebrities of different walks of life (politics, business, show business, science, …) are collected and presented, and thus help promote the planetariums.
Once the first celebrity messages have been recorded, they will be made available here!