Happy New Year! Though you likely won’t be able to tell the difference, Earth is at its closest to the Sun for the year this month, January 2020. Perihelion, the point in Earth’s annual orbit where it’s closest to the Sun, occurs each year in early January. This year, perihelion occurs at 1:48 a.m. Chicago time on […]

Header Image: Total solar eclipse that occurred on August 21, 2017. Image Credit: NASA Out with the old and in with the new decade! As 2019 comes to a close, we’re reflecting on monumental astronomical discoveries and historic space events that happened over the last 10 years. We asked our stellar staff members to tell […]

Image Caption: An example of nebulae (and the interstellar medium) can be found in this picture of the Pleiades, an open cluster consisting of approximately 3,000 stars at a distance of 400 light-years (120 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, AURA/Caltech, Palomar Observatory Even the most novice of stargazers are […]

Header Image: Guests dressed up in costume at Adler After Dark: Go Boldy in 2016. If you’re even a little bit into sci-fi, then there’s a good chance you’ve watched, read, or consumed SOMETHING that references multiverses. In fact, multiverse theory has gained popularity as of late. From Marvel comics to Doctor Who to Rick and […]

Header Image: An artist’s illustration of Kepler-452b. Image Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle Editor’s Note: Updated in May 2023. I was an undergraduate physics major at Cornell University, with my eye on a career in astronomy, when I saw the original Star Wars movie following its release in 1977. A rather famous astronomer and science popularizer […]

Header Image: An artist’s illustration of a thick ring of dust near the supermassive black hole of an active galactic nuclei. Image Credit: NASA / SOFIA / Lynette Cook   Ah yes, it is the day after Thanksgiving, and I bet you’re currently dealing with the inevitable ‘post-feast malaise’. What if I told you that at this […]

Planet transits are unique celestial events that allow us to measure the geometry of our own Solar System and beyond! Catch the next transit of Mercury at the Adler Planetarium this November!

Header Image: The distorted shapes in the cluster shown here are distant galaxies, from which the light is bent by the gravitational pull of dark matter within the cluster of galaxies. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), and the CLASH Team Greetings fellow astro-fans! Halloween is almost here, and as you know, it is […]

Header Image: The far side of Earth’s Moon as seen based on data from cameras aboard NASA’s robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University Heads up! We’re blasting off into a very SPACE (and Moon) themed weekend. Today, we kick off World Space Week, which runs from October 4-10. This […]

Header Image: While C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) is too far away for us to get detailed images, it probably looks something like this image taken on March 27, 2016, by the Rosetta spacecraft, 329 km from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image measures 28.7 km across. Image Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam The Day the Adler Met an […]