New Planetarium Will Enhance Peru’s Capital City of Lima
On Friday, the website livinginperu.com reported that the people of Lima soon will enjoy the wonders of a new planetarium. This is great news for Peru, as there are currently not many museums, science centers, or other tourist sites in Lima devoted to helping people learn more about nature.
A modern planetarium is an especially terrific asset for the country, as evidence from many of Peru’s archaeological sites suggest that ancient Peruvian peoples used the stars above and our solar system to their benefit. Examples of places where these observations occurred include Machu Picchu and also the site of Chankillo, which is thought to be the site of the most ancient solar observatory in the Americas. Now the people of today’s Peru can also use a special tool to learn about what happens in the skies above.
The new planetarium won’t be Lima’s first. An older and smaller planetarium exists in the Lima district of Chorrillos. After taking a look at this photo of the old planetarium, it’s not hard to imagine how big of an improvement the new facility will be (although I’m sure this old planetarium serves/served its purpose very well). Several zoos and a Museum of Natural History provide Lima residents and children with the only other major and formal opportunities to learn more about nature. There currently is no permanent aquarium in Lima: a sad fact, given that Lima is located directly aside the Pacific Ocean.
According to livinginperu.com, the new Mutsumi Ishitsuka Planetarium will allow an estimated 60,000 students to learn more about the night skies each year. This is a bigger benefit than it might seem, given Lima’s extremely high levels of light pollution and air pollution. The planetarium was partially funded by the Japanese government and was named in honor of Dr. Mutsumi Ishitsuka for his 50 years of service as Japanese-Peruvian astronomer. In addition to the inauguration of the new planetarium this past Thursday, several other new astronomy-related facilities in Peru are being visited by professional astronomers this week as part of an international workshop. There is a new solar station in Ica, and also a radio observatory in Huancayo.
Photo Credit: Nils Geylen on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
