MONTREAL - The Montreal Planetarium, the oldest in Canada, shut its St-Jacques St. doors for the final time Monday afternoon at 5 p.m.

Ground was broken on a new planetarium near the Biodome on August 25, but that facility is not expected to open until 2013.

Part of what is to be known as "Space for Life," the new planetarium will join the Biodome, the Insectarium and the Botanical Gardens to become a hub for tourists and science enthusiasts.

The Dow Planetarium – as the current facility was originally called – was inaugurated by former mayor Jean Drapeau on April 1, 1966.

Built at a cost of $1.2 million, the first exhibit "Nouveau ciel, Cité nouvelle" (New sky, new city) was shown three days later.

Since then nearly 6 million people have passed through the planetarium's doors, watching more than 250 original productions, taken part in around 50 conferences and watched more than 58,000 shows in the "Théâtre des étoiles."

The final show to take place in that theatre is called "Fragments of the Solar System," a presentation of the various asteroids, comets, "dwarf planets" and interplanetary dust floating around space.

The new $46 million planetarium and the surrounding "Space for Life" will make the area outside Olympic Stadium a unique site in the country.

"The Planetarium coming here transforms this site into the largest concentration of scientific museums in Canada," said Charles-Mathieu Brunelle, executive director of the planetarium, at the sod-turning ceremony in August.

The site will feature high-tech workshops, scientific content and multimedia shows, but will also be quite poetic, said Brunelle.

"You take your shoes off when you come in the theatre, so you're a bit unbalanced. And you feel vertigo because you can't see the floor too well, so you're a little bit worried," he explained. "Then you're on rocks, soft rocks, and you plunge into the sky. Then you can see the universe and come back to earth."

The hope is that the new planetarium will attract 300,000 visitors in its first year.

The new planetarium will meet the platinum LEED environmental design standard and will have a green roof, to offset all the concrete on the nearby Olympic site.

The "Space for Life" area is expected to create around 8,300 jobs.

The bulk of the cost of the new planetarium is being financed by the city of Montreal ($9.4 million), the governments of Quebec and Canada ($9 million each) and its title sponsor Rio Tinto Alcan ($3.8 million).