The International Planetarium Society (IPS) is the largest association of professionals and non-professionals related to a planetarium. It operates worldwide and takes care of various aspects in the planetarium business: coordination of events, motivation of staff and improvement of strategies. It was founded in 1970. One of the main tasks is to organise an international conference which is held in a 2-year's intervall where the members can exchange their knowledge. Also, a quaterly journal Planetarian is published. Several commitees of the IPS are connected to special areas of interest, e.g. the publication's, the portable planetarium's, the fulldome's, the internet, or technology commitee.
Web: http://www.ips-planetarium.org/

Small planetaria address their audience in a somewhat different way than large facilities with hundreds of visitors. The latter ones are forced to provide elementary content to a mixed public with people having different ages and different levels of astronomical knowledge. Visualisation comes at the expense of firm education. This is where smaller planetariums can play to their strength: They deal with rather homogeneous groups and, in addition, the shows are usually live sessions. Both factors support a more efficient didactics. For example, an already known item may be shown in a different perspective. Acquired knowledge will be longer kept when visual distraction is less. The higher requirements to presenter's skills make it worthwhile transmitting the interest in science.

The Home Planetarium Association (HPA) is a loose group of builders, collectors, and enthusiasts of planetarium projectors. Founded in 1994, the HPA helps keep the dream alive of having someone's own star theater at home. It covers the categories of constructing a projector from scratch, restore old commercial units, making an "hybrid" as a combination of home and commercial device, and trying a video projection with a computer. The members of the HPA share their knowledge of How-To's, networking, and archiving. There are no constraints to their creativity: Some custom works are made of wood, use the darkened ceiling of the bathroom, or operate on toy mechanisms -- there is no device absurd enough to be disregarded. A newsletter celebrating all of them is periodically available.
Website: www.planetariumsathome.com

The Internet opens a communication channel to bring any people of similar interests together. The network of contributors for planetaria does not make an exeption. Most prominent internet groups can be found below.