Guwahati Planetarium’s Multi-Activity Centre nears completion, targets 1.8-L visitors

Guwahati, June 23: Work on the Multi-Activity Centre at the Guwahati Planetarium is at an advanced stage, and the planetarium is expecting an increase in the number of visitors on the back of recent additions to its facilities.

“The construction of the Multi-Activity Centre within the Guwahati Planetarium premises is going on, and the civil works are almost at their final stage. The planetarium is now preparing for building the interior of the centre, a part of which will be executed by the State Public Works Department (PWD), whereas the rest will be implemented by the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), Ministry of Culture, Government of India,” said Saibar Rahman, Director of the Guwahati Planetarium.

The Multi-Activity Centre will accommodate a state-of-the-art modern auditorium hall, a 15-D theatre hall, a virtual reality (VR) studio, a space gallery, a science gallery, and a digital library, together with an astronomical observatory and a cafeteria on the terrace.

The planetarium is aiming to complete the modern auditorium hall and the 15-D theatre hall by the end of 2025.

“The primary objective behind setting up the Multi-Activity Centre is to inculcate scientific temperament among the masses, especially focusing on the students, teachers, and the children communities across the State, thereby removing age-old myths, misconceptions, and superstitious beliefs through entertainment-based, hands-on science and technology education,” Rahman said.

The Multi-Activity Centre is an RCC building with four floors, each having an area of 550 square meters on average. Thus, the complete floor area of the facility, including the terrace, will be around 2,500 square meters.

The Guwahati Planetarium is also looking at increasing its footfall.

“The total number of visitors, as per the record of the last two years, is around 1.5 lakh per annum, which may increase to 1.8 lakh by the end of this financial year due to the recent addition of infrastructure and other facilities,” Rahman said.

Guwahati Planetarium recently developed an Educational Metaverse as an extension of its already existing Virtual Reality (VR) zone, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati.

“The Educational Metaverse includes parallel worlds with educational content with a highly immersive, natural, engaging, and playful learning experience. The benefit of Educational Metaverse is that it has the possibility of including unlimited educational content over the coming years. Besides, the Guwahati Planetarium already has a set of telescopes for both public viewing of astronomical events and for advanced astronomical research purposes,” he said.

Additionally, in the last fiscal, the Guwahati Planetarium procured three different types of telescopes.

“The first type is a Maksutov-Cassegrain, the second one is a Dobsonian type, and the third one is a set of two Astronomical Refractor Telescopes. All are dedicated to the public observations of regular and occasional celestial events,” Rahman added.

The Guwahati Planetarium also regularly undertakes various activities across Assam to promote scientific knowledge and to inculcate scientific temper amongst the people.

“Among the recent activities are the organization of various State-level hands-on training workshops on observational astronomy for teachers, telescope-making workshops for students, popular public talks, celebration of special astronomical events, regular and occasional telescopic sky observations for the public, and various awareness and interactive in-house as well as public outreach programmes across the remote corners of Assam covering all the districts. A few such recent programmes were conducted in Sadiya, Dhemaji, Majuli, Kaziranga, Sualkuchi, and Chaygaon,” Rahman said.

He added that the planetarium is planning to conduct a State-level workshop within its premise, as well as outreach programmes across different districts, including mobile planetarium shows, sky observation programmes, and other awareness-cum-interaction programmes in the coming months.

By

Pranjal Bhuyan