Cologne Planetarium
The Cologne Planetarium is located in the Leonardo-da-Vinci-Gymnasium in Cologne-Nippes . A Zeiss small planetarium (ZKP-1 built in 1965) in the basement of the school offers groups of up to 30 people the opportunity to show the starry sky, the Milky Way and planets as they can be seen with the naked eye in clear weather. The Cologne Planetarium also has an observatory , which was built between 1960 and 1963. A very large part of the facility - including the telescopes and domes - was built by former students in their spare time.
Technical details
Observatory
The observatory consists of two domes on the school tower (4 m) and on the flat roof with a diameter of 5 m. The dome on the tower houses a large mirror telescope with an opening of 16 inches (40 cm) and a focal length of f = 2.4 m. This instrument is used for both visual and photographic sky observation. Bright astronomical objects can be demonstrated to a larger audience in the planetarium using a television camera.
A Zeiss AS refractor with an opening of 110 mm (f = 1650 mm) was installed in the second dome on the flat roof. The relatively simple and compact design enables the students to carry out observations on their own. The instruments are supplemented by an 8-inch Celestron-Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and a Schmidt camera. Since 1962 there have been astronomical study groups at the Gymnasium in Nippes.
planetarium
The projector ball of the ZKP-1 contains 32 individual projectors, each with a copper foil. Part of the starry sky is stamped into each copper foil. The starry sky, as it would be seen over Cologne on a clear night, can be represented with over 5,000 stars.