Penza planetarium is located at Penza

Penza

-Honors:A minor planet, 3189 Penza, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1978, is named after the city.-Notable residents:...

 Central Park of Culture and Restore after Belinsky in the building formerly occupied by the Penza Hydrometeorological station. Historical and cultural memorial of local importance. The first planetarium device was installed in 1954.

History

Astronomy and meteorology research in Penza was started in 1855 when Ilya Ulyanov

Ilya Ulyanov

Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov was a Russian public figure in the field of public education and a teacher...

, physics and mathematics teacher of Penza noble institution, started to conduct systematic observations of the Earth atmosphere at the request of the Kazan University rector Nikolai Lobachevsky.

In 1928  the People's Observatory was built at the park as a memorial to Ilya Ulyanov

Ilya Ulyanov

Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov was a Russian public figure in the field of public education and a teacher...

. Now the wooden building of observatory is a historical and cultural monument of local importance.

Creating planetarium

The first unit for Planetarium

Planetarium

A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...

 was established in 1954. In 1975 a better German machine "Small Zeiss" was installed to demonstrate a star sky at any time.

Penza Planetarium has a rich methodological base and a set of exhibits, demonstrated at the five halls of the museum. The original meteorite

Meteorite

A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...

s, Ulugh Beg

Ulugh Beg

Ulugh Bek was a Timurid ruler as well as an astronomer, mathematician and sultan. His commonly-known name is not truly a personal name, but rather a moniker, which can be loosely translated as "Great Ruler" or "Patriarch Ruler" and was the Turkic equivalent of Timur's Perso-Arabic title Amīr-e...

's Quadrant

Quadrant

Quadrant may refer to:* A sector equal to one quarter of a circle, or half a semicircle, see Circular sector* The sectors of a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system, see Cartesian coordinate system#Quadrants and octants...

, Foucault pendulum

Foucault pendulum

The Foucault pendulum , or Foucault's pendulum, named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the...

 can be seen at the exhibition . The models of first artificial satellite of the Earth

Sputnik 1

Sputnik 1 ) was the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1s success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space...

 and orbital stations "Salyut 1

Salyut 1

Salyut 1 was the first space station of any kind, launched by the USSR on April 19, 1971. It was launched unmanned using a Proton-K rocket. Its first crew came later in Soyuz 10, but was unable to dock completely; its second crew launched in Soyuz 11 and remained on board for 23 days...

" and "Mir

Mir

Mir was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the...

» are in the Space Hall .