Planetarium Tycho Brahe

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe

The planetarium was named in honor of the famous Danish Astronomer Tycho Brahe from the 16th century. His work was of great importance to astronomy for many centuries, ours included.

Thanks to the donation of Bodil and Helge Pedersen in 1983, who donated 50 million DKKs, the planetarium could be established. That way, the building was constructed between 1987 and 1989 which was designed by the architect Knud Munk.

The Planetarium opened on 1 November 1989 and the foundation stone was laid on 22 February 1988. This wasn’t a coincidence because on that exact day Uranus and Mars, which are two planets of our solar system, were in rare close conjunction. So observing the two planets from the Earth, they were very close to each other, which is usually not the case. Furthermore, this day had been chosen because especially Mars played a very important part in the astronomer's work with the determination of the positions of the stars.

To begin, the planetarium is located at an easy accessible spot.You can get to it by walking a few minutes from the town hall square or the central station. Besides that, the building of the planetarium can be seen easily while walking down the´Gammel Kongevej´ street in which one it

is located. The inside of the building is huge, the ceiling and the walls have a slightly round form and they are colored in a pretty dark way, which covers the planetarium in a mysterious atmosphere. The cinema room inside it is also very impressing. It was the first time for us all to see a movie in they way we did there. The round form of the screen gives a special touch to the  3D effects.

We’ve learned that human knowledge of astronomy has evolved a lot over the last few centuries. While we walked through the rather small exhibition area, we saw old measuring instruments and illustrations of former thoughts about the sky. Further ahead, we could examine the surface of our neighbor planet Mars. We even got to know the different densities of Earth, Moon and Jupiter by lifting a 5 kilogram (on earth) weight.

After watching an orb taking shape of our different planets, we observed different components of satellites and other spacecrafts.

Standing in front of a greenscreen, visitors are able to control a space shuttle through universe. Even if it’s just an animated game, it can be fun while you’re waiting for the film to start in the IMAX theater. There are different movies to watch, always introduced by a 3D presentation of our universe. It shows you how everything is linked and how big everything is and how small we are. After watching those different constellations just like Cassiopeia, we enjoyed a touching documentation about the motherly love of an ice bear towards its children.

Personal opinion:

Losch Maxim:

In my eyes, the planetarium was very disappointing. Not because of the fact that I visited an impressive planetarium a few years ago but because of the fact that I’ve been addicted to astronomy since my childhood and so I expected a lot of this exhibition. In the end, I did not learn anything I hadn't know before. The only thing I liked, was the IMAX theater, I never saw a 3D animation of the universe in such an awesome way even though it gave me a bit of a headache. But if you aren’t looking for complicated facts and just want to pass some time while having fun, it can be a great place to go. You’ve got, for instance, a green screen where you’re added into a game - this can be fun, not only for children but also for adults. After all, the worst thing about the planetarium is, that there’s a lot of information written in Danish without being translated into English. Thus you’re quite discriminated as a tourist.

Xavier Fisch

To be honest I was a little bit disappointed by the planetarium. It was very informative, meaning that there were a lot of panels explaining different things about astronomy. All the shown descriptions were written in Danish, so we didn't learn anything. I also expected to see more special things in such a big planetarium, like an artificial nightsky. However, there were some special tools, like the greenscreen where we could fly a spaceship through space by using our arms and legs in front of a camera to navigate. All in all I wouldn´t recommend to visit the planetarium as a tourist, but I would suggest to visit the cinema which is inside it. The large curved screen which extends itself over the walls and the ceiling mixed with the 3D effects of the movie really put you in the setting of the movie. So the cinema is definitely worth a visit.

Entringer Anne:

Personally, I had never visited a Planetarium before so this was a premiere for me. To be honest, I imagined the exhibition to be bigger than it was: There was one main room where we could see a lot about the different planets and around this room there were a few games (mostly for children I reckon) and also facts and videos from outer space and tips on how to behave out there. The games, especially the one with the green screen, were quite amusing. A few of us even 'immortalized' themselves in the high score of the game, which I thought was pretty cool. The exhibition was rather disappointing, I thought because it was so small and everything seemed to be compressed in that one room.

Otherwise, the film we went to see after the exhibition was quite impressive: This was mostly due to the big, curved screen which really gave you the feeling of being part of the actual movie. The tour through space as well as the polar bear movie were the highlight of the planetarium, at least for me.

Finally, I would recommend the planetarium, but rather for the IMAX theater than for the exhibition. For people who don't know that much about planets and space, they can learn a bit more but for those who already know a lot about it, I think they will leave with a feeling of disappointment. All in all, people shouldn't plan more than an hour for the exhibition, because there is not that much to see.

Maxim Losch, Xavier Fisch, Anne Entringer   3C1