London Planetarium

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The building that once housed the London Planetarium is in Marylebone Road, London. It is adjacent to Madame Tussauds and is owned by the same company.

Wikinews has related news:

London Planetarium closes to make way for celebrity-themed show

Opened in 1958 on the site of an old cinema that was destroyed in the Second World War, the planetarium seated an audience of around 330 beneath a horizontal dome approximately 18 m in diameter. For its first five decades of operation, an opto-mechanical star projector offered the audience a show based on a view of the night sky as seen from earth. Between 1977 and 1990, evening laser performances called 'Laserium' were held. In 1995, one of the world's first digital planetarium systems, Digistar 2 (created by Evans & Sutherland) was installed in a £4.5 million redevelopment, allowing monochromatic 3D journeys through space and many other kinds of show to be presented. The planetarium was used to teach students from University College London's astronomy department the complexity of the Celestial coordinate system, allowing for practical lectures delivered by a unison of planetarium and UCL staff.

In 2004, the Planetarium was upgraded to a full-colour Digistar 3 system that allows both pre-rendered and real-time shows to transport the audience in an immersive fulldome video environment to distant realms of time and space.

In January 2006, the London Planetarium had been renamed the Auditorium, and Madame Tussauds announced that in July 2006 the Auditorium would open with a show by Aardman Animations about celebrities. To say 'farewell' to the planetarium, Madame Tussauds allowed free entry to the show in its penultimate, week (24–30 April 2006).

The London Planetariam no longer exists and it is no longer possible to visit it as a discrete attraction. The web site is redirected to Madame Tussauds and here is a statement from their web site:

"In 2006 the Planetarium was rebranded and renamed the Star Dome. The Star Dome is part of the Madame Tussauds attraction and is included in the ticket price. Please note that we no longer show astronomy-based shows"