Birla Planetarium

A mindboggling and fascinating place to spend time with your kids or friends, the Birla Planetarium in Chennai is a dream come true for anyone interested in space science and for leisure travelers also. Equipped with space exhibits and hosts numerous 3D space shows, the Birla Planetarium is visited by a horde of people to experience the virtual night sky and to gaze the stunning star-studded sky.

About the Museum

If you say that your childhood didn’t comprise of counting the stars from your balcony or you never raised any curiosity about the space to your elders or didn’t ask why the moon was chasing you while on your way back home from buying groceries with your mom, well, sorry to burst it to you but we don’t believe you. As much as it is fascinating to learn about space and cosmos it is not a child’s play to actually visit the space. But don’t worry because located in Chennai with the name BM Birla Planetarium is a place that offers its visitors a splendid experience of glimpsing the space and the stars and making their childhood dream come true of watching the outer world with their own eyes.

Housed in Periyar Science and Technology Center Kotturpuram, the Birla Planetarium is visited by numerous visitors to virtually tour the night sky and watch the cosmic shows in the spherical dome inside. The planetarium was founded in 1983 and is fondly linked with BM Birla, who was a great Indian entrepreneur and a visionary but was inaugurated in 1988 by R Venkataraman, the then President of India. Despite being established more than 30 years ago, the Birla Planetarium still bags its place as one of the most contemporary and advanced planetariums in the country, visited by many school children and adults too and is a magnificent and fascinating place for star-watching, exploring the galleries, and parks.

The most prevalent exhibitions at the Birla Planetarium are the Solar System, Cycle of Stars, Sky and Seasons, Man on Moon, Comets, etc. The other exhibits entail DRDO Pavilion which was set up in the planetarium by DRDO in association with Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Center. The pavilion displays the achievements of DRDO across the nation in the field of aeronautics, instrumentation, electronics, etc. The exhibition comprises a wide range of models of guns, naval systems, the historical progression of guns, scale down model of Brahmos 1.3, ultrasonic cruise missile, specialized wear designed by DRDO for Indian soldiers positioned at Siachen Glacier to combat the bone-chilling temperature, and much more.

Apart from these exhibits several 3D shows are also organized at different timings and different Indian languages in the planetarium. The shows comprise topics such as sky and seasons, earth, moon, eclipses, comets, shooting meteoroids, and stellar cycles. The themes of these programs usually change every three months giving the visitors something new whenever they visit. So, if you are planning to have visit to Chennai, make sure you put Birla Planetarium in your itinerary to have a wonderful time.