Deep Space Adventure

Join us for a new, immersive space experience like no other in the world! Deep Space Adventure takes you aboard the observation deck of a futuristic starship where you will be surrounded by the larger-than-life phenomena of our dynamic Universe.

Tickets for Deep Space Adventure are available with the Deep Space Adventure Pass.

Advance Deep Space Adventure Pass

Buy your ticket today, and reserve the show time you want! Call (312) 294 0360 to reserve your Advance Deep Space Adventure Pass. A handling fee of $3 per person applies. Adler tickets make a great gift - buy an Advance Deep Space Adventure Pass or a gift membership this holiday season.

The Searcher Show

Searcher Logo Encounter The Searcher, a visitor from another galaxy, and join him on an adventure through space and time as he searches for his lost civilization. This science fiction adventure is based on real science and features stunning visualizations of the formation of our Universe, the collision of two galaxies, a spectacular supernova explosion, and a supermassive black hole. The Searcher was written by author and screenwriter, Nick Sagan, son of the famous astronomer Carl Sagan, and features the voice of Tony Award-winning actor, Billy Crudup.

Learn more about this show, including show times on The Searcher show page.

No late seating once the show is started.

Clark Family Welcome Gallery

IMAGE: Welcome Gallery Visitors begin their Deep Space Adventure in the Clark Family Welcome Gallery. Multimedia interactive exhibits feature greetings from some of today’s prominent space explorers who have personal ties to Chicago. They will prepare museum visitors to explore space by encouraging them to ask intriguing questions and to build exploration skills. The out-of-this-world gallery features futuristic architecture, colorful lights and video presentations, creating a dynamic and constantly changing environment.

Video: Meet some of the everyday explorers you can hear in the Clark Family Welcome Gallery.

Grainger Sky Theater

The centerpiece of Deep Space Adventure is the Grainger Sky Theater, which offers audiences the most immersive, technologically enhanced theater experience ever developed. Visitors become space adventurers and set off on a journey to explore our Universe like never before. Fashioned as the observation deck of a starship, the theater invites visitors to come aboard for the ultimate journey into deep space.

IMAGE: The Searcher The Grainger Sky Theater’s premier show features scientific simulations from powerful supercomputers and observations from the most advanced telescopes in existence, resulting in breathtaking visualizations that capture the audience’s attention and brings the action up close. Watch as a star is torn apart by a black hole, witness the collision of two massive galaxies, view the formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe, and encounter a dramatic supernova explosion.

The Grainger Sky Theater will project the largest single seamless digital image in the world with an ultra high definition screen resolution of more than 8k x 8k pixels. This far surpasses the cinematic standard of 2k x 4k pixels, presenting a level of realism that can only be surpassed by actual space travel.

IMAGE: Deep Space Adventure - Grainger Vivid images of planets, stars, galaxies and other celestial objects are shown in the highest resolution and quality possible to evoke the feeling of being in deep space. The on-screen imagery will expand beyond the traditional 180-degree dome, surrounding the visitor with a 360-degree experience using special lighting effects in the floor.

Deep Space Adventure Fun Facts

Learn more about the Deep Space Adventure experience!

IMAGE: Grainger Sky Theater The Grainger Sky Theater is more than a theater - it is a space simulation environment. It has the ability to view the Universe from any time, place or distance, totally at the control of the operator. (view larger image)

IMAGE: Grainger Sky Theater Image The Grainger Sky Theater has 20 state-of-the-art projectors, an unprecedented number for a digital theater. These projectors are actively used in high-end military simulators. (view larger image)

A glimpse of the Grainger Sky Theater. The Grainger Sky Theater will project the largest single seamless digital image in the world with an ultra high definition resolution of 8k x 8k pixels, far surpassing the cinematic standard of 2k x 4k pixels. (view larger image)

IMAGE: Grainger Sky Theater Floor There are 400 LED lights embedded in the floor of the Grainger Sky Theater. Each light is individually controlled and can be programmed to 64 million different colors. (view larger image)

IMAGE: Grainger Sky Theater Dome The surface of the dome is perforated with more than 100 million tiny holes (95 holes per square inch), which assist with ventilation and audio capabilities. The dome is 23% transparent because of these holes. (view larger image)

A look at the Grainger Sky Theater Audio System. The audio system in the Grainger Sky Theater can play back 72 separate audio sources over 19 channels simultaneously. It can place a sound at any exact location inside the volume of the theater. (view larger image)

Each panel of the dome was trimmed and fitted by hand. Adjacent panels are aligned within one millimeter of each other in order to provide a completely seamless surface for projected images. (view larger image)

IMAGE: Grainger Welcome Gallery The Clark Family Welcome Gallery is a futuristic, constantly changing environment with one-of-a-kind architecture and vibrant lighting. (view larger image)

IMAGE: Frank Clark Family Welcome Gallery The Clark Family Welcome Gallery features four interactive walls that focus on different ways to explore space (Look, Go, Build and Ask). (view larger image)

The Clark Family Welcome Gallery features video greetings from some of today’s prominent space explorers, including NASA astronauts John Grunsfeld and Joan Higginbotham.

Check out our Adler Night and Day podcast with astronaut Joan Higginbotham from March 1.

IMAGE: Welcome Gallery The multimedia interactives in the Clark Family Welcome Gallery use infrared sensors to detect body heat, allowing visitors to interact with the gallery through their movement.(view larger image)

IMAGE: Clark Family Welcome Gallery Structure Approximately 13,000 lineal feet of aluminum tubing and 20,000 square yards of fabric were used to create the Clark Family Welcome Gallery. (view larger image)

The multimedia interactives in the Clark Family Welcome Gallery use infrared sensors to detect body heat, allowing visitors to interact with the gallery through their movement. The Clark Family Welcome Gallery has 125 LED lights, each capable of producing 16 million different colors and over two billion different lighting combinations. (view larger image)

The creative process for the premiere show began over two and a half years ago. (view larger image)

The Searcher was written by author and screenwriter Nick Sagan, son of famous astronomer Carl Sagan.

Learn more about Nick Sagan on his website.

Billy Crudup narrates the new Searcher show. Tony Award-winning actor Billy Crudup, who recently played Doctor Manhattan in the film The Watchmen, narrates the show.

Learn more about Billy's projects on IMBD.

The Searcher - Fictitious World When creating the fictitious worlds in the show, animators and astronomers factored in every aspect of what affects a real planet – including distance from its parent star and length of orbit and history – to make it as realistic as possible. (view larger image)

The galaxy collision depicted in the new show is a visualization of the collision of our own Milky Way Galaxy and the nearby Andromeda Galaxy. This collision will occur in approximately three billion years.

Learn more about this collision on NASA's website.

The new show depicts the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, which is three million times the mass of our Sun. This is relatively small compared to other known supermassive black holes that may be as large as 18 billion times the mass of our Sun.

Learn more about black holes.

The supernova visualized in the show is based on a real supernova that was observed by Tycho Brahe in 1572. Type Ia supernovas are brighter than 100 billion stars and can outshine an entire galaxy, peaking in brightness for about 30 days.

Learn more about supernovas.

The show uses data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to depict the most accurate representation of the Moon for the first time in a show. The Adler is an Education and Public Outreach partner of the LRO.

Learn more about this partnership.

The opening scene of the new show portrays the formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe, from shortly after the Big Bang to the present day.

Find out more about the formation of the Universe.

Formation of Large-Scale Structure Scene The formation of the large-scale structure scene only lasts about two minutes in the show, but it took over three weeks of computational time and created more than 380 terabytes of data which was processed at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. (view larger image)

The show includes a depiction of Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object from Earth. At 10.8 billion miles away, it is moving almost 50 times the speed of sound, 9.6 miles every second.

Learn more about Voyager on NASA's website.

The flyover scene of Chicago depicted in the show uses the most detailed three-dimensional model of Chicago in existence.

The original music for the show was composed by Andrea Centazzo.

Learn more about his other projects on his website.

The creation of the visual effects in The Searcher required eight animation artists an estimated 3,500 hours to complete.

A network of 522 computers ran non-stop for three months to render the show. Rendering is a computer process using color and shading to make an image appear solid and three-dimensional.

The computer system for the new theater has approximately 300 terabytes of storage, which is sufficient to contain the entire contents of the Library of Congress.

Check out a 3-D rendering of the Adler created for a fly through for the show.

The technology used in Deep Space Adventure has the ability to create and present scientific data using images that are as good as the human eye can perceive. This presents a level of realism that can only be surpassed by actual space travel.

See a small version of a visualization of a Red Giant and White Dwarf from the Grainger Sky Theater (.mov file).

Partners and Recognition

IMAGE: NBC 5 Logo NBC5 is the exclusive Deep Space Adventure TV Media Partner

The Adler Planetarium gratefully acknowledges The Grainger Foundation for its leadership in transforming the historic Sky Theater.

Additional major support has been contributed by: Donald C. Clark Family, ComEd, ITW, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Dushan and Nancy Petrovich, Polk Bros. Foundation and Public Museum Capital Grants Program – Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, Illinois State Museum.

Support for technology in the Grainger Sky Theater was contributed by IBM and CDW.

Deep Space Adventure simulations and renderings were contributed by the Data Analysis and Visualization team at in NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, NASA Ames Research Center.

Deep Space Adventure visualization renderings were contributed by the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's National Center for Supercomputing Applications.