Park Slaski / Silesia Park - Science Museum

There are a few parts of the museum you can look at without paying or booking.  There is a collection of old scientific instruments you can look at including some used by Copernicus.

Copernicus was a Polish Astronomer who realised that the earth revolved around the sun, and not the sun around the earth.  This was a revolutionary theory at the time and one that the church was not very happy about, although it was not initially controversial.  70 years later Galileo was ordered to drop his support of the theory and then placed on house arrest for the rest of his life for heresy.

It was lovely to see these pieces of history preserved and on display.  It's a good reminder of how creative they were in studying the skies to begin with.  It's easy to forget we just have to look when all the new advances come from such advanced technology.

The other thing we saw was a giant sun dial.  This was visible from the glass lift to the planetarium and would be lovely to visit in the summer, when there is no snow and a little bit more sunlight.

There are other things to do at the museum which have an admission price.  These include seeing films in the planetarium, exhibitions on geophysics and astronomy, a space flight simulator and a giant camera obscura at the top of a tower.  The tower is a good viewpoint for looking at the park and the surrounding cities with glimpses of distant mountains on clear days.

We have not visited the exhibitions or the camera obscura but we did go to the space flight simulator.  This is a great experience but you need to be able to fit in the chairs and to do so, you need to be under 120kg in weight.  It is also not recommended for anyone with motion sickness!  You have to climb up in to an individual pod where you are strapped into a chair with googles placed over your eyes.  There are five pods and half the group goes in first while the others watch display screens showing what the simulator is doing and the instrument readings.  All of this is in Polish but I could still understand some of the instruments.

In imagine that we will visit other parts of the museum during other trips.

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