Imagine sitting on a spacecraft and taking off.

MP Birla Planetarium has created a show where visitors will go on a space trip to planets seated in a spacecraft, which is the planetarium itself.

“Visitors will see on the dome the planetarium as it is standing on JL Nehru Road and then lift off as a rocket spaceship. As visitors take their seat they will get a feel of a launch followed by a countdown, ” Debiprasad Duari, director, research & Academic, MP Birla Planetarium, said.

As the spacecraft goes up, visitors will get to see an aerial view of the city before embarking on the space trip.

Visitors will pass through all aspects of the solar system and outside the galaxy to the universe and then ultimately come down with a parachute.

The show, named “Our Universe”, will be projected from November 2 at the 6.30pm show daily. Initially, the show will be in English, but there are plans to project it in Bengali and Hindi,too.

The show will be educative and the content will focus on high school and college students.

“For students, it will be informative... almost like a series of classes taken in 40 minutes. The cosmic voyage will take visitors past most of the major planets, at times going on to the planets itself and seeing the physical situation with volcanoes erupting and debris falling on spectators,” Duari said.

But the experience is visual and not tactile. The information and images of each of the planets as the imaginary spacecraft fly past each of them will be “up to date keeping in sync with the latest observations”.

The renovated planetarium has attracted 800,000 visitors since reopening a year ago.

The regular Cosmic Collisions show in Hindi, Bengali and English has attracted several students and people from various walks of life, Duari said.