Saint Louis Science Center

St. Louis has this awesome park that runs through the middle called Forest Park. Straddling the southeastern edge of the park is one of America's top five science museums, the St. Louis Science Center. The Science Center campus is made up of four buildings. The James S. McDonnell Planetarium in Forest Park, a newer building (the main building) across Interstate 64, the Exploradome next to the main building, and the Taylor Community Science Resource Center. The Exploradome is actually supported by air, so it's like being inside a giant balloon. I wasn't able to get a really good picture of the outside of the planetarium, so I'm borrowing this one from the Wikimedia Commons, a repository of public domain media.



That is the exterior of the James S. McDonnell Planetarium, a hyperboloid structure by American architect Gyo Obata. Its fantastic eye-catching form hints at what can be found inside. My brother Robbie and I went inside the museum and were immediately wowed by a giant working contraption that whisked colored balls around on rails. This was fun to watch for a while before we bought our tickets and went into the museum.

 

The museum has lots of hands-on demonstrations of scientific principals along with traditional exhibits. We wandered through the main building before grabbing some food for lunch. After lunch we walked into the inflated "exploradome" and then across the skybridge to the planetarium. In the skybridge, we put together an arch... harder than it looks!! After taking our time looking at some space-race era artifacts, we went back to the hotel in Kirkwood.

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