COVER N. 338 - GERMANY

Postmark: Garching B. München 108 85748 23.10.2023

Posted on the 23rd October; received on the 26th October 2023

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I still remember the first time I went to a Planetarium in Lisbon, quite a few decades ago. Watching planets and other celestial bodies travel above our little and still quite empty heads was immensely inspirational and awe inspiring.

It all began 100 years ago, on the 16th September 1923, in Germany, when the founder of the Deutsches Museum, Oskar von Miller, commissioned the Carl Zeiss Jena company to manufacture a device that could project  a replication of the motion of celestial bodies.  After a first demonstration on October 1923, Zeiss Planetarium Model 1 entered service in 1924 in the planetarium located in the Deutsches Museum (which I presume was sadly destroyed during the aerial bombings or the second world war).

A planetarium  100 years ago..... I can't even phantom the difference between what was shown to the original visitors and what inquiring kinds of all ages nowadays have the opportunity to be confronted with. And I am not talking exclusively about the technological evolution of the projecting systems... in fact, as much as those might have evolved from the early analogue to current day digital, the amount of knowledge we have ammassed during the last 100 years on how the universe above our heads works is absolutely staggering.

Come to think about, it's been ages since I last went to the Planetarium... maybe I should make a visit one of these days....

Meanwhile Thanks a lot Alex for another nice cover in my collection.

Deutsche Post celebrated the 100 years of the Planetarium in Germany by issuing on 05OCT2023 the nice 0,95 € stamp on the cover which includes some printing in metallic colours, so as to replicate a current day projection session at a planetarium. Because of this the stamp is quite dark, but seen under a light the mettallic effects really come through..

To complete postage Alex used  4 definitives of the world of letters series started in 2021. The 5 cent pertains to the first issue, dated of 02DEC2021 and the 10 cent to the 2022 set, issued on 02NOV2022.

The rather profuse postmark hails from Garching bei München a Bavarian city, obviously close to Munich.