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Leading author Terry Pratchett officially opens UK's largest planetarium

17 March 2008
Speakers open largest planetarium
The speakers are David Livermore (chairman of trustees); Terry Pratchet; Sir Patrick Moore; Phil Winfield (INTECH's Director) and Prof. Bill Wakeman.

The UK's largest planetarium will be officially opened by popular author and amateur astronomer Terry Pratchett on Wednesday 19th March 2008 at the INTECH Science Centre in Winchester, Hampshire.

The new state of the art 176-seater digital planetarium is expected to boost the numbers of visitors to the Centre per annum which is currently 90,000. It is also anticipated that 26,000 members of the public 5,000 schoolchildren (and 650 teachers) will visit the planetarium in the next 12-months. INTECH is an educational charity for inspiring and educating people in science and technology.

The South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) enabled the INTECH Science Centre to convert its auditorium with £650,000 in funding. SEEDA's funding of the planetarium is in response to STEM the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics a government initiative geared towards creating a pool of scientists, engineers and technologists for the future.

Terry pratchet opens largest planetarium

The aim is to meet the increasing demands of the STEM sector, which in turn helps the UK economy. The Budget announced a £30 million science fund to give every science teacher in secondary and further education access to high quality professional development, to improve the science offer to today's schoolchildren.

Professor Bill Wakeham, SEEDA Board Member and Vice-Chancellor of Southampton University said: "Our funding is in recognition of the education value the facility will have for schools as studying the solar system in primary schools is required by the National Curriculum and the universe is taught in secondary schools. We believe that developing a planetarium at INTECH, is an excellent way of encouraging a far greater number of students to continue studying science, engineering and mathematics subjects across the South East and beyond. "The design and installation of the planetarium was undertaken by Global Immersion, which is based in Burgess Hill, West Sussex. The giant screen is 16.5 metres in diameter. The first public showing will be begin on Friday 21 March 2008.

To contact the planetarium for further information please call 01962 863791 or visit www.intech-uk.com for details.

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