100 years of the planetarium: The May 7th, 2025 global highlight and closing event

Presentation themes: fulldome, future sustainability and worldviews, PR for planetariums, planetarium centennial

Planetariums around the world are currently celebrating the Centennial of the planetarium, the 100th anniversary of the first star projector and planetarium. While the opening ceremony on October 21, 2023, celebrated the anniversary of the first presentation of a star projector, the even larger event is still forthcoming: The 100th anniversary of the opening of the world’s first planetarium, the 100th birthday of the planetarium, on May 7th, 2025. This will at the same time be the closing ceremony of the anniversary year. While the opening ceremony naturally took place at the historic sites, Jena and Munich, and looked back at the historic events, it will be equally natural for the closing event to look ahead to the future. Therefore it would make sense for this event to be presented in a novel way, and be hosted not only at the historic sites. Our suggestion is to realize this as a globally distributed event with a multitude of hosts across all continents. Each host would present a segment of the event and each segment would be of equal contribution and importance. We not only want to present our proposals to this event but we would like to invite you to bring your suggestions and ideas to be discussed during this workshop. Tell us about your ideas, expectations or how you can contribute to realize an inclusive event for all planetariums around the world or how we can address technical and organizational challenges, and that serves to best take the planetariums into the future!

Image © SPB | Natalie Toczek