The closest “Supermoon,” of the year and glimpses of all the naked-eye-visible planets can be expected during February 2019. About an hour after sunset, the planet Mars is about halfway up in the sky, between the zenith and the southwest horizon. It’s not as bright as some of the wintertime evening stars to its east, […]

Bright stars and planets, meteors, an eclipse, a “Supermoon,” and a close approach by the Sun are all expected during January 2019. In evening twilight this month, the planet Mars is high in the southern skies. The night of the 12th, it appears near a waxing crescent Moon. Each evening Mars appears higher in the […]

Did you get to see the lunar eclipse this past January right before sunrise? It was tough to see. The Moon was low in the west, and we didn’t get to view the entire eclipse because the Moon set before the eclipse finished. Folks out in the western U.S. got a much better chance to […]

Have you ever seen a comet in the night sky? I suspect most of the people reading this haven’t. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of comets in the Solar System—more than 5,000 have been discovered so far and several dozen can be spotted using very large telescopes each year—but because most comets are […]

Do the days seem to be getting a little darker this month? It’s not your imagination. You can see the change for yourself, along with some of the night’s brightest stars and planets, during the month of December 2018! This month the Sun rises around 7:00 am CT, and sets before 4:30 pm. That means […]

This winter, we’re stopping to #LookUp and celebrate the mysteries and magnetism of our closest celestial neighbor, the Moon. The Moon has been a source of wonder for all of human history. It has been a muse for poetry, art, and epic stories. As people studied and recorded the patterns of the Moon’s movements, they […]

Chicago has long been a city of stargazers. And one way or another, all astronomical roads in Chicago have led to the Adler since it became the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere in 1930. Here are a few stories, objects, and documents from our collections that remind us how the Adler has helped Chicagoans […]

Watching the skies as they change—from day to night, from season to season—is a pastime as old as civilization. It’s even more fun when you know something about what you’re watching. Here are a few sky highlights you can see for yourself in the month of October 2018. The planet Mars is the brightest readily […]