Berlin Observatory
The Berlin Observatory (Berliner Sternwarte) is a German astronomical institution with a series of observatories and related organizations in and around the city of Berlin in Germany, starting from the 18th century. It has its origins in 1700 when Gottfried Leibniz initiated the "Brandenburg Society of Science″ ("Sozietät der Wissenschaften") which would later (1744) become the Prussian Academy of Sciences ("Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften"). The Society had no observatory but nevertheless an astronomer, Gottfried Kirch, who observed from a private observatory in Berlin. A first small observatory was furnished in 1711, financing itself by calendrical computations.
Zeiss Major Planetarium
Planning for the area commenced with old gas works to be torn down by 1981. The 750 anniversary of Berlin gave an opportunity to the communist government to create a new style of housing estates with decorative high-rise residential buildings, a cultural centre with restaurants and a planetarium supposed to be larger than the old one in the Archenhold Observatory of Berlin. The building from architect Erhardt Gißke was opened on schedule on 9 October 1987. The dome of the main hall has a diameter of and it is currently equipped with a "Universarium IX" planetarium projector from Carl Zeiss AG.