Wolfsburg Planetarium celebrates its reopening

Jena/Wolfsburg | 10 March 2023 | ZEISS Planetariums

ZEISS has equipped the Wolfsburg Planetarium with a new generation of video projectors for 360-degree projection. After thirteen reliable years with the first generation of ZEISS VELVET projectors, the planetarium can now use projectors with modern LED technology. The new ZEISS VELVET LED projectors offer very high color brilliance with the world's best contrast of 1:2.5 million. Thanks to the significantly higher resolution, visitors will experience a sharper and more detailed image from now on.

“Following the modernization of our STARMASTER two years ago and the replacement of the ZEISS VELVET projectors, the Wolfsburg Planetarium is one of the most modern planetariums in Europe,” says a delighted Eileen Pollex, the planetarium's managing director. “The technology of the ZEISS VELVET projectors was developed specifically for planetariums and simulators, both areas where extremely high contrast is essential,” explains Martin Kraus, Head of Planetariums at ZEISS. “In less than three years, we were able to equip 23 planetariums with the new VEVET LED projectors. For our customers, this means not only more brilliant projection, but also significant energy and cost savings.”

ZEISS had already upgraded the ZEISS STARMASTER star projector in 2021. Now the star projector and fulldome projection together can present astronomical and scientific simulations under the Wolfsburg dome in a particularly realistic way. The new technology was inaugurated in a ceremony with invited guests. The first visitors were already able to experience the new projection quality in two sold-out concerts by Giorgio Claretti at the planetarium.

The Wolfsburg Planetarium and ZEISS have a long history together. In 1978, Volkswagen AG acquired, among other things, a planetarium projector from the then VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in return for the delivery of cars to the GDR and donated the ZEISS SPACEMASTER projector to the city of Wolfsburg. “The planetarium with technology from the East was opened in western Wolfsburg in 1983, and that was despite the fact that planetariums were also built at ZEISS in Oberkochen,” Kraus explains. By 1996, the reunification of ZEISS East and West was already history and Wolfsburg got its second star projector, a STARMASTER, also from Jena.