Mysuru Planetarium: Nirmala Sitharaman Reviews Progress

Mysuru, Nov 8 (PTI) Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday reviewed the progress of the planetarium, being built with assistance from her MPLADS fund.

The COSMOS high-tech 15-metre LED dome planetarium, with an 8K resolution, will be the first 'Tilted LED dome' Planetarium in the world, the finance ministry said in a post on X.

The finance minister has allocated Rs 5 crore of her Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds for the Cosmology Education and Research-training Centre project and laid the foundation stone in March 2022, it said.

The project, with a budgetary estimate of Rs 91 crore, is executed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) through an MoU with the University of Mysore for construction and operation.

The implementation of the project is being carried out under the guidance of the Principal Scientific Advisor, and an advisory board co-chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India.

The centre is expected to create knowledge access to students of over 200 colleges, schools, and the public at large, apart from connecting to other science communication and research organisations across Karnataka and India.

It has been actively carrying out many educational and outreach programmes in English and Kannada and has engaged with about 25,000 people in the last two years.

The centre is also pursuing research on historical Kannada texts, palm-leaf manuscripts and other artefacts related to astronomy in the Mysuru region in collaboration with the Oriental Research Institute.

It is expected to be completed in the next 10 months, with regular planetarium shows starting in the last quarter of 2025.