B. M. Birla Science Museum is an Indian
science museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, Industry (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...
located in
Hyderabad, India
Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...
. Constructed by civil engineer P. A. Singaravelu, it comprises a planetarium, museum, science centre, art gallery as well as a dinosaurium.
The museum itself was the second phase of the science centre when it opened in 1990.
The centre also houses India's first private Space Museum. The museum is a unique facility which is dedicated to history of the space program of India. The space museum was inaugurated in July 2019 and was curated by
Pranav Sharma.
Planetarium
The Birla Planetarium is a wing of the Science Centre. The
planetarium
A planetarium (: planetariums or planetaria) is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation.
A dominant feature of most planetariums is ...
was inaugurated by
N. T. Rama Rao, on 8 September 1985 and is one of three Birla Planetariums in India. The others are the
M.P. Birla Planetarium in
Kolkata
Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...
and
B.M. Birla Planetarium in
Chennai
Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...
.
Space Museum
The museum brings to light various contributions of ISRO to public awareness through images, illustrations and words. More than forty three people contributed to the narration and which were taken out after some several thousand pages of information and data collected over the span of almost two years by the curator
Pranav Sharma. Satyajit Tuljapurkar was the architect of the place and digital artwork was done by Arjun Kota. Ankur Chhabra and Smyan Thota worked as curation assistants and outreach team leads.
There are more than twenty exhibits including the models of PSLV, GSLV, GSLV-MkIII (which recently successfully carried Chandryaan 2 in the outer space). The legacy series of satellites such as Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Rohini, APPLE and SROSS are also exhibited. A model of International Space Station has been set up amidst Communication Satellites.
Dinosaurium
File:Kotasauraus.jpg, Kotasaurus
File:Kotasauraus adilabad.jpg, Legs of Kotasaurus
The Dinosaurium is the newest addition to the planetarium and science center and opened in 2000.
Its exhibits include a 160-million-year-old mounted
Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis,
excavated in the Adilabad district in
Telangana
Telangana is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated in the Southern India, south-central part of the Indian subcontinent on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, ele ...
and presented to the Science Museum by the
Geological Survey of India
The Geological Survey of India (GSI) is a scientific agency of India. It was founded in 1851, as a Government of India organization under the Ministry of Mines, one of the oldest of such organisations in the world and the second oldest survey ...
. The Dinosaurium has a collection of smaller fossils of dinosaur eggs, marine shells and fossilised tree trunks.
See also
*
Astrotourism in India
*
M. P. Birla Institute of Fundamental Research
*
List of planetariums
*
Nizam Museum
References
External links
B.M. Birla Science Centre, HyderabadM.P. Birla Planetarium, Kolkata
{{coord, 17, 24, 12.05, N, 78, 28, 14.33, E, display=title
Museums in Hyderabad, India
Science museums in India
Planetaria in India
Science and technology in Hyderabad, India
Museums established in 1985
1985 establishments in Andhra Pradesh
Tourist attractions in Hyderabad, India