[HN Gopher] A Brief History of the First Planetarium
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       A Brief History of the First Planetarium
        
       Author : Brajeshwar
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2024-05-09 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | smooc wrote:
       | I'm pretty sure that the mechanical planetarium of Eize Eizinga
       | from 1781 predates this "World's First". Maybe because it is
       | projected?
       | 
       | It's worth your visit btw.
       | 
       | https://www.eisinga-planetarium.nl/en/history/
        
         | sopchi wrote:
         | One reproduces the sky as seen from Earth (planets, stars,
         | galaxies, etc), while the other is a model of the solar system.
         | The Zeiss device will let you see the sky as it is at different
         | dates, from different places on Earth, will let you see the sky
         | as if the Sun was not shining during daytime (so you can see
         | the other objects). It is unfair to discount it as just a new
         | way of presenting what that other machine was showing. They are
         | in fact very different in what they can do.
        
         | treve wrote:
         | First thing I thought too! But I guess it's a different
         | definition of planetarium.
         | 
         | Wikipedia has even older mentions of planetarium, but does cite
         | the one in Franeker as the oldest still working:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetarium
        
         | _Microft wrote:
         | This seems to be a model of the solar system which is more
         | commonly known as ,,orrery".
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery
        
       | Delphiza wrote:
       | The last time that I went to a planetarium it was far too
       | digital. As a child I would love going to the planetarium that
       | was part of a university and it inspired my interest in astronomy
       | at a (too) early age. Those original analogue projectors with all
       | the movements and lenses of various sizes were amazing! Maybe we
       | have it too easy with imax projections and lost something along
       | the way that made a planetarium experience so believable and
       | magical.
        
         | IncreasePosts wrote:
         | A little related, but I recently used a friends digital
         | telescope (you look into an eyepiece, but you're looking at an
         | LED screen of the captured image, not light directly from the
         | lenses). And, for whatever reason, it felt far less magical
         | than actually letting the photons from Jupiter hit my eye(yes,
         | I know they are absorbed and retransmitted at various points,
         | but you know what I mean).
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | This is pretty much how I feel about electronic view finders
           | on modern digital cameras. I love my xSLR type cameras where
           | I'm seeing the photons directly from the lens and not some
           | digital version of them. I was not even aware of the
           | telescope system that you mentioned actually being a thing,
           | and I'm holding back my involuntarily gag reflex that kicked
           | in just from the description.
        
       | coisasdavida wrote:
       | The last time I went to one was in fact in Jena and it was a
       | modern Zeiss projector. It was an awesome experience for a
       | Brazilian who always used Zeiss stuff in photography, on top of
       | being in Jena and seeing the Optical Museum and the Schott Glass
       | Museum.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-09 23:01 UTC)