Opened in July 2021, it is the biggest and most modern astronomy museum in the world.

The Shanghai Astronomy Museum (or Shanghai Planetarium) (上海天文馆) has been opened in July 2021. I was very lucky to get a ticket during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Normally, you have to book the tickets 7 days in advance and getting tickets on a major national holiday is nearly impossible.

The Shanghai Astronomy Museum is located in the Lin-Gang District, in the south eastern corner of the city. It takes almost 2 hours by subway/train from the city centre. I took line 16 which exits at the Dishui Lake. From the exit station, it is about 800m, an easy 10 minute or so walk.

As with all educational institutions, such as museums, the entry fee is extremely reasonable (30 RMB). You book your online ticket through WeChat and just show it at the entrance. You also need (as usual) both health codes, the Shanghai Health Code and the 14 day travel history .

The entrance is an impressive piece of architecture and once you are inside, it gets even better.

The first exhibition is dedicated to our solar system. The biggest focus is on the earth, with a huge animated sphere. Earth and moon are to scale compared to each other, it was quite impressive how big the moon actually is. I would consider myself an astronomy nerd, but i never quite realized this size.

The second largest focus was (logically) on our sun. Details like how the internal fusion process works were explained very clear so even children can understand it.

The display and facts about the other planets was not less impressive and all based on the latest information.

There were some amazing and huge meteoroids displayed as well.

On the way to the next exhibition there were a number of photographs and art related to the universe. I am not a big art fan, but most of them looked great.

The next part of the exhibition was dedicated to scales in the universe, from the smallest to the biggest, as well as the believed timeline from the big bang to now.

There were some more sections about light, history of different theories (such as particle physics, quantum theory, relativity, black holes etc. There were no really distinct pictures there, so i leave this up to your imagination or feel free to lookup at wikipedia.

The next large section was the exploration of space and the image people had about space from about 6,000 B.C., the Egyptians, Copernicus etc. The most impressive and interesting part was of course the modern time, with all the different robotic probes , manned spacecraft and rovers. It was and is especially impressive what China achieved in the last 20 years, with rovers on the mars, the moon, a manned space station and countless other spacecraft and related achievements.

Another extremely interesting part was the „telescope“ part – with pictures and data about the latest space and earthbound telescopes. Also, the upcoming new telescope projects of the next 10 years were shown.

In the B1 floor, there were a few restaurants as well as some cinemas. Also, you could rest or eat beneath an enormous floating globe.

Outside, there are a few observatories, which open to fixed hours only. There are also some other „space themed“ spots in the adjacent park, it was however too warm to visit all of them.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and hope you can enjoy the museum yourself soon! Or have you been there already? Feel free to share your impressions!