A Day at the Adler Planetarium

On Saturday afternoon I went to Chicago's Adler Planetarium. It has the world's oldest operating planetarium, the western hemisphere's first planetarium, and is the world's only museum with two operating planetariums. I got a ticket to the museum and one show, "Nightsky Live" which would basically just show off the planetarium with a view of the night sky over Chicago.



The outside of the old building is adorned with brass plates representing the 12 astrological zodiac symbols. The back of the museum has had a very tasteful addition which hosts a larger museum and solarium.



The Atwood Sphere is actually Chicago's oldest planetarium. It was sold to the Navy and then bought back by the Adler planetarium in the 90s. The phere is a 15ft (5 m) diameter sheet metal sphere with 692 holes in the surface, allowing light to enter to show positions of the brightest stars relative to an Earth viewing point. The sphere slowly rotates around the viewer putting the stars in motion.



In the basement of the planetarium is more exhibit space where many ancient astonomy tools are on display. There were far more than I could photograph, but here are some of the more interesting ones.



I took this picture of the projector inside the planetarium even though I technically wasn't supposed to take photos in there, I think they mean just while the show was going.



Behind the planetarium is a small observatory with a telescope to enable Chicagoans to see the night sky at over 5000x. The observatory is only open to the public on Fridays and during special events like eclipses, but they use it for research regularly.



There are some pictures taken from the observatory at this page:

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/exhibits/doane.shtml