It’s night and you’re looking up into the night sky. What’s the first constellation you see? If you thought to yourself “the Big Dipper,” you’re not alone! In Western culture, it’s often one of the first things we learn to recognize in the night sky as children. For many people in the United States, this […]

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Our Universe is filled with strange objects that even scientists have trouble classifying. Read on to learn about brown dwarfs, the celestial objects that are kind of like a star and kind of like a planet but are actually neither. A wise man once said, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes”. That […]

From moon phases to meteor showers, the Adler Planetarium has got you covered when it comes to knowing what to look for in the sky. Read our list below to get started! At all times, half of our Moon is lit by the Sun, just as half of the Earth is always lit by the […]

606 TRAIL The western entrance of the 606 Trail at 1801 N. Ridgeway, Chicago, IL is relatively clear of buildings, though not necessarily clear of light pollution. The 606 Trail is open until 11:00 pm daily. FOREST PRESERVE DISTRICT OF COOK COUNTY’S PALOS PRESERVES Did you know the largest Urban Night Sky Place in the […]

“One of the things I’m passionate about is bridging the culture wars,” Adler Astronomer Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase says cheerfully. In her office, Grace is rifling through a stack of bright pink foam-board posters featuring portraits of religious people who’ve made great contributions to science. She separates one from the rest. The bearded face on it […]

The evening of March 13, 1781, William Herschel was observing the sky with a fine 7-foot refracting telescope he’d made by himself, from the backyard of his home in Bath, England. At that time, Herschel was earning his bread as a musician, but he had been developing a strong interest in astronomy, sacrificing many of […]

The longest days and shortest nights of the year—for Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, anyway—take place this month, June 2019. The first day of summer for the Northern Hemisphere occurs on the solstice, at 10:54 am CDT on the 21st. It’s the longest day of the year, with the Sun rising very early and setting very late. […]

Header Image Photo Credit: Mark Subbarao, Dinoj Surendran, and Randy Landsberg Hello! Welcome to our 4th AstroFan! The past few features have dealt with some of the coolest objects in space (neutron stars, our Moon, exoplanets, etc)—this feature of AstroFan is going to switch things up and focus on the actual SPACE around these objects, […]

By Jesus Garcia (Electronics Design System Engineer and Educator) and Dr. Geza Gyuk (Astronomer). On Wednesday, April 17, 2019, the Adler sent its first mission to space! This ambitious project was a collaboration between students, scientists, and volunteers from around Chicagoland. Last spring, students from the ITW David Speer Academy, a public four-year charter high […]

It’s Astronomy Day! On such a day we could seize the opportunity to talk about what it feels like to look up through a telescope or how our collections experts preserve centuries-old astrolabes or the latest updates on our Adler teen-led underwater meteorite hunt… but as I watch the people around me do what they […]