Sri Lanka Planetarium

Sri Lanka Planetarium is a public planetarium located in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is the first and only planetarium in the country and maintained as an institute under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Research.[1]

Sri Lanka Planetarium
ශ්‍රී ලංකා ග්‍රහලෝකාගාරය

Established	1 February 1965 (1965-02-01)
Location	Prof. Stanley Wijesundaran Mawatha, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka.
Type	Planetarium
Director	K. Arunu Perera
Website	www.planetarium.gov.lk

The Planetarium was established on 1 February 1965 by the State Engineering Corporation as a special feature for the Ceylon industrial exhibition held in Colombo same year.[2] The planetarium was designed by the chief engineer from the State Engineering Corporation of Ceylon, A. N. S. Kulasinghe, and was constructed by engineers from Germany.[3] The building takes elements from the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (Sir Frederick Gibberd - 1960) and the Cathedral of Brasília (Oscar Niemeyer - 1960).[4] The building has a reinforced concrete floor and a pre-stressed concrete folded plate roof, which was pre-cast on-site.[4] The building was funded by the German Democratic Republic as a gift to Ceylon.

With the aid of a universal projector stationed at the centre of this building, the artificial sky is created on the domed screen above a 570-seat auditorium.[5] The universal projector is a product of Carl Zeiss AG East Germany.