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First space observatory to open in central Vietnam
Vietnam will open its first-ever astronomical observatory in central Khanh Hoa province in March, according to the Vietnam National Satellite Center (VNSC).
The observatory, built on a rocky area called Hon Chong in Khanh Hoa's Nha Trang City, some 1,040 km south of capital Hanoi, is in the finishing stage and will be ready for a pilot run by the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, said the VNSC.
Its official opening is scheduled in March.
The observatory in Nha Trang.
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The dome can accommodate up to 60 people. This area is like a cinema whose screen is a dome with 9 meters in diameter. It has 6 projectors filming 3D images of the sky and stars. The films are about the solar system, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, etc., astronomical phenomema, space discovery…It can supply visitors with knowledge about astromonhy such explanation for seasons in a year, positions of heavenly bodies in the sky, phenomena like solar eclipse, lunar eclipse, etc.
Hon Chong observatory is one of the two observatory projects in Vietnam, costing a total of 120 billion Vietnamese dong (5.3 million U.S. dollars). The other one is under construction inside the Vietnam Space Museum in Hanoi's Hoa Lac High-Tech Park.
Both the observatory and the museum, which will open for visitors in mid-2018, are part of the VNSC project, the largest-ever national scientific project in the country with investment of some 600 million U.S. dollars.
