Header Image: This montage of images of the Saturnian system was prepared from an assemblage of images taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft during its Saturn encounter in November 1980. This artist’s view shows Dione in the forefront, Saturn rising behind, Tethys and Mimas fading in the distance to the right, Enceladus and Rhea off […]

Header Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies, were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ― Carl Sagan Even if you’re just a novice space enthusiast, I’m sure you’ve heard some variation of […]

If you receive a letter from me, it will likely end with my favorite call-to-action, “Keep Looking Up.” And, while some have interpreted this phrase to have optimism as its intention, I have a much more literal request in mind. Look Up. Yes, you. Right now. I’ll wait… Chances are you noticed something you hadn’t […]

Header Image: Slipping into shadow, the south polar vortex at Saturn’s moon Titan still stands out against the orange and blue haze layers that are characteristic of Titan’s atmosphere. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute On the morning of June 27, 2019, NASA announced that a mission called Dragonfly—which will send a drone to explore Saturn’s […]

Header Image Caption: An artist’s rendition of Enceladus, Saturn’s 6th largest moon. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech This past weekend, the Adler Planetarium celebrated the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11⁠—a mission that brought us to a whole new world, our Moon.  It’s pretty undeniable that our Moon is spectacular. It’s our only natural satellite, it’s composed of […]

Header Image: This is probably the first Moon rock picked up by Neil Armstrong as part of the “contingency sample.” Because the collection was so hurried and the documentation sparse, NASA scientists are not completely sure of the identification. Credit: NASA The Apollo missions sent humans to the Moon 50 years ago. Getting there required […]

In September 2016, we—the Adler’s ’Scopes in the City team—brought a telescope to the Wrightwood-Ashburn library branch on Chicago’s southwest side and set it up in front of the library. This branch has a beautifully clear view of the sky with no tall buildings in the way. A teen involved in other library programs came […]

Setting: Tuesday, June 30, 1908, around 7:15 am. A remote forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia. A large fireball streaks through the sky followed by an intense wave of heat felt up to 40 miles away. A loud explosion. The ground shakes. Silence. If the playwrights of today were to write a theatrical […]

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 […]