Sri Lanka Planetarium ( si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා ග්‍රහලෝකාගාරය) is a public planetarium located in

Colombo Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo m ...

, 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. 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. 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 Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The building takes elements from the

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, officially known as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King and locally nicknamed "Paddy's Wigwam", is the seat of the Archbishop of Liverpool and the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Li ...

(Sir

Frederick Gibberd Sir Frederick Ernest Gibberd (7 January 1908 – 9 January 1984) was an English architect, town planner and landscape designer. He is particularly known for his work in Harlow, Essex, and for the BISF house, a design for a prefabricated council ...

- 1960) and the

Cathedral of Brasília The Cathedral of Brasília (Portuguese: ''Catedral Metropolitana de Brasília'', "Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasília") is the Roman Catholic cathedral serving Brasília, Brazil, and serves as the seat of the Archdiocese of Brasília. It was des ...

(

Oscar Niemeyer Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was ...

- 1960). The building has a reinforced concrete floor and a pre-stressed concrete folded plate roof, which was pre-cast on-site. The building was funded by the

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **G ...

as a gift to Ceylon. The planetarium is high and in diameter. The building was refurbished in 2014 at a cost of Rs 200 million and re-opened to the public on 9 December. The planetarium has a digital fully-spherical projector stationed at the centre of the building, which projects an artificial sky on the diameter dome above a 570-seat auditorium. The universal projector is a product of

Carl Zeiss AG Carl Zeiss AG (), branded as ZEISS, is a German manufacturer of optical systems and optoelectronics, founded in Jena, Germany in 1846 by optician Carl Zeiss. Together with Ernst Abbe (joined 1866) and Otto Schott (joined 1884) he laid the f ...

East Germany.

References

{{Reflist Tourist attractions in Western Province, Sri Lanka Planetaria