India's first LED-dome planetarium is about to open its doors — and it has a Finance Minister's constituency fund to thank for a crucial push. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Thursday, November 12, 2026, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate 'Cosmos-Mysore', a first-of-its-kind planetarium built by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), in Mysore, Karnataka, on November 13, 2026.

What makes the Cosmos-Mysore dome unlike any other in the country

Forget the old-school projector throwing static star-maps onto a curved ceiling. Cosmos-Mysore scraps that model entirely. The facility is built around a 15-metre tilted dome lined with roughly 6,150 panels and an estimated 4.2 crore individual LEDs — a system whose panels can be controlled in real time, not frame-by-frame like a film projector.

That distinction matters enormously for educators. A live-programmable dome means a presenter can pause the night sky mid-show, zoom into a nebula, rewind a solar eclipse, or pivot instantly to a student's question — something no traditional planetarium in India can do on the fly. The result is a sky theatre that behaves less like a cinema and more like an interactive classroom built for 360 degrees.

Sitharaman's ₹5 crore MPLADS bet on Mysore's science future

Mysore is Sitharaman's parliamentary constituency, and she directed ₹5 crore from her Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) allocation toward the project. MPLADS, launched in December 1993, allows MPs to recommend small-scale infrastructure works — schools, roads, cultural centres — in their constituencies. Channelling that fund into a cutting-edge LED planetarium rather than routine civic works signals a deliberate bet on science literacy as local development.

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics, established in 1971 and operating under the Department of Science and Technology, designed and built the facility. IIA has long run astronomy outreach programmes across southern India; Cosmos-Mysore represents its most ambitious public-facing infrastructure yet.

Multilingual sky shows and Mysore's own astronomy story

The sky theatre will screen professionally produced astronomy programmes alongside a special documentary that traces the historical links between Mysore and astronomical science — the city has a rich heritage of royal patronage for scientific institutions. All shows will be available in Kannada, English, and Hindi, a multilingual approach that mirrors the broader national push to deliver science education in regional languages rather than gating it behind English fluency.

India's planetarium network has grown steadily since the Birla Planetarium chain began in the 1960s, but most facilities still run ageing projector technology. A fully LED-driven dome sets a new technical benchmark — and if it performs as designed, it becomes a template other cities will want to replicate.

The stars over Mysore have waited long enough. Tomorrow, they get a stage worthy of them.