The Chicago Traveler

The Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum opened in 1930 and was the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere. It is home to two full-size theaters, including the world’s first all-digital projection StarRider Theater. It stands on Northerly Island (next to Charter One Pavilion), which was initially meant to be the first of several man-made islands along the lakeshore.
In 1923, Dr. Walther Bauersfeld of the Carl Zeiss Corporation in Germany designed a projector fully capable of accurately reproducing the night sky. Placed in the center of a hemispherical room, the machine produced a precise celestial map onto the inner surface …read more

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If you’ve got a few holiday wishes, tomorrow may be your night. What could be the best meteor display of the year will reach its peak Thursday night, and there will be plenty of falling stars to wish upon.
The Geminids are an annual meteor shower, named after the constellation of Gemini. The meteors appear to originate from a spot in the sky near the constellation twins. Tomorrow night, any time after 10:00 p.m. until dawn on Friday, look southward for the two bright stars that form the heads of the twins. (Mars, a small red dot in the sky, should …read more

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