Nizhny Novgorod Planetarium named after G. M. Grechko

Brief Information

The Nizhny Novgorod Planetarium has changed its shell twice, and this is the key to reading it. In 1948 it opened in the former Alexeyevskaya Church: four brick walls were built inside, a hall for 100 people was created, and the ceiling frescoes were covered by an 8-meter dome. After the church was returned to the Orthodox Church, the planetarium moved to the other bank of the Oka, to the Kanavinsky District.

The new building did not appear on an empty site: a former merchant’s house opposite the Nizhny Novgorod Circus was adapted for it. That is why the history of the planetarium here is visible not as a smooth chronology, but as a change of tasks assigned to already existing spaces. The sharpest turn took place in the Great Star Hall: in 2007, the Argus system began operating under the 16-meter dome, and Nizhny Novgorod received the first digital planetarium in Russian practice.

What to Notice First

It is worth comparing several material traces of this change in function. The dome is the planetarium’s main form: at first it concealed church frescoes in the old building, while in the new Great Star Hall it became a 16-meter screen for full-dome projection. After the 2021 modernization, the hall received a frame-vacuum projection screen, acoustic finishing, a multichannel sound system, and seats designed for viewing images on the dome.

Next to this digital device, it is worth noticing a more “manual” space-related detail: the Cosmonautics Hall contains a Soyuz-TMA spacecraft simulator intended for practicing manual rendezvous and docking with the ISS. The observatory adds another scale of observation: not modeling the sky on a dome, but working with telescopes. And the bust of Georgy Grechko in the square in front of the planetarium recalls why his name is connected with more than just the sign: he helped preserve the institution and pushed for the construction of the new building.