Peter Harrison Planetarium

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The Peter Harrison Planetarium is a 120-seat digital laser planetarium, situated in Greenwich Park, London and is part of the National Maritime Museum. It opened on May 25, 2007.[1]

The planetarium uses Digistar 3 software with blue, red and green lasers and grating light valve (GLV) technology to create a 4,000 pixel strip. This strip is swept to produce a 5,000 by 4,000 pixel image, refreshed 60 times per second. The image is projected through a fisheye lens onto the dome of the planetarium.[2]

The planetarium is housed inside a 45-ton bronze-clad truncated cone, tilted at 51.5o to the horizontal (the latitude of Greenwich), and standing on the prime meridian.[3] It was built as part of £17.7m re-development of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and funded with a grant from the Peter Harrison Foundation.[1][4]

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[edit] References

  1. ^ a b New Planetarium Opens At Greenwich Royal Observatory
  2. ^ Nathan, Stuart (August 13, 2007). "Star of the Show". The Engineer 293 (7730): 24,25. 
  3. ^ Reopening of the new Royal Observatory, Greenwich; National Maritime Museum press release; May 2007
  4. ^ £3m pledge by Peter Harrison Foundation secures re-development of Royal Observatory, Greenwich; National Maritime Museum press release; November 2005

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