Home >> Science & Nature >> Astronomy

What Is the Difference Between a Planetarium and an Observatory?

When viewing the night sky, you may want to see the details of the moon or the stars. A telescope may satiate some of these desires, but for close-up and detailed images, you likely will have to go to a planetarium or an observatory. Depending on what you want to see, the choice of a planetarium or an observatory will determine the type of imaging for the night sky.

Observatories
- Observatories have been part of the history of astronomy since the discipline formed around the 1300s BC era with the Chinese. Essentially, an observatory is any space where a telescope or sky-viewing instrument can be used to see directly into the night sky. An observatory building usually had a lab for an astronomers mathematical measurements and an opening in the roof where the astronomer could see into the night sky through a telescope.
What Observatories Do
- Observatories measure the direct light of objects in space. Through the use of telescopes, an astronomer can look directly at a distant object in space through visible light or other forms of imaging. Besides the visible spectrum, telescopes can see objects through infrared or radio waves. This helps give astronomers unique images of interstellar objects such as stars. Observatories are also usually isolated from the blinding lights of major municipal areas. Most observatories are at country-side locations or on mountains so astronomers can view the night sky with little interference from human lights, such as city lights.
Planetarium
- A planetarium is a more public and fun astronomical experience. Unlike observatories, which are mostly used by professional astronomers, planetariums are used at museums to display images of space. A planetarium is usually set up like a movie theater encircling a star projector in the middle of the seats. The star projector projects a life-like image of the night sky onto the roof of the planetarium, which is designed like a globe. This gives the illusion that you are looking up at the night sky.
Major Difference
- While students and astronomers can see real images of space from observatories, a planetarium allows the public to see images from space in a movie-theater-like setting. Planetariums are helpful and entertaining places for astronomy lovers to view the night sky in complex details. The planetarium may even display images of the night sky as seen from different hemispheres of the earth, since many hemispheres see different stars and constellations in the sky.

Astronomy