For decades, planetariums have been created to serve the cause of astronomical enlightenment - to offer people knowledge and understanding and a sense of place in a universe far bigger than themselves. It is an important role and one that we in planetariums continue to play - changing, we hope, as times, technology, educational philosophies, and our view of the universe change.

The first projection planetarium was demonstrated by the Zeiss Optical Company at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany in 1923. By 1970, the height of the Apollo moon program, there were an estimated 700 to 800 planetariums in the world, half of them less than six years old. Today, 26 years later, that number has more than doubled to a little over 2,000.