Czech Prime Minister Inaugurates New Planetarium in Hradec Králové

Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Bohuslav Sobotka, officially inaugurated a new planetarium in the Czech city of Hradec Králové in January. Equipped with five Zeiss Velvet projectors the 100-seater planetarium features a 12-meter dome and forms part of the astronomical observatory complex located on the outskirts of the university city in north-east Bohemia.

System functions such as planetarium and image projection are controlled by a cluster of eight networked computers also supplied by Zeiss. Each of the five Velvet systems projects partial images that are combined to produce a full dome image without any visible edges, filling the entire 230 square meters of the dome surface. "The fulldome image in Hradec Králové is the best we have ever achieved with our technology in every single respect,” said Wilfried Lang, Vice President Planetarium Division at Zeiss.

This new digital planetarium provides the Hradec Králové region with a cutting-edge facility for students and qualified professionals in up-and-coming disciplines of modern technology. I'm confident that the planetarium will boost public interest in these fields even further," said Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka in his inauguration speech. The planetarium forms part of a strategy that aims to increase the attractiveness of studying at Czech schools, universities and other higher education institutions in connection with science and research activities.