Visitors, young and old, are trooping to the Kerala State Science and Technology Museum (KSSTM) and Priyadarshini Planetarium at PMG like never before. For the first time in its history, KSSTM’s daily collection has crossed the Rs 50,000-mark - not once, but twice in the past nine days.
Daily collection first crossed the Rs 50,000-mark on November 23, and again on December 1, Saturday, when the institution scooped up Rs 53,000 which, in fact, is a record, KSSTM director Arul Jerald Prakash said. New facilities like the dinosaur park, laserium and thrillerium have renewed the interest of the visitors in the KSSTM, he said.
‘’On November 23, we had more than 600 visitors. On Saturday, the numbers crossed 700 for our evening show alone,’’ he said. Recent months have seen the KSSTM adding a robotics corner and the dinosaur park to its attractions.
Daily collection had crossed Rs 40,000 on a number of occasions during the past few days, but had remained shy of 50K.
Majority of the visitors are school students, and KSSTM has a reduced ticket rate for them - Rs 10 each for the planetarium and the science museum galleries and Rs 15 for laserium. The ticket rates for adults are as follows; Rs 15 each for the planetarium and museum and Rs 25 each for the laserium and the thrillerium. In its dinosaur park, KSSTM has set up exhibits of 15 different species.
In future, the museum also plans to develop the robotics corner into a full-fledged robotics gallery. KSSTM, which has a number of high-powered Schmidt-Cassegrain auto-tracking telescopes in addition to binoculars, also organises public viewings during celestial events like eclipses.