Osaka City Science Museum

About

The predecessor of the Osaka Science Museum was the Osaka Municipal Electric Science Museum, opened in 1937 in Yotsubashi as a promotional facility marking the 10th anniversary of the Osaka Municipal Electricity Bureau. It was the first facility in Japan to install a planetarium, a German-made Carl Zeiss Model II. The present science museum opened on October 7, 1989, in Nakanoshima, built as part of a project marking the 100th anniversary of Osaka's city administration and funded by a 6.5-billion-yen donation from Kansai Electric Power. The Electric Science Museum closed that May, handing its function over to the new building. The museum's total floor area is 9,356.48 square metres, designed by the Institute of Environmental Development. The site was previously occupied by the Faculty of Science of Osaka University. The museum preserves and displays the original Carl Zeiss Model II planetarium projector, the first ever used in Japan. Its currently operating planetarium instruments are the 'Infinium Sigma,' introduced in 2019, and 'MediaGlobeΣSE,' introduced in 2022, projected onto a 26.5-metre dome with 250 seats.