The Adler ‘Scope

Header Image: Kids looking through a telescope outside at the Adler Planetarium. Author: Emilse Alvarado, Virtual Field Trips Educator and Sarah Smail Picture this: It’s a crisp Tuesday morning. Your class is happily singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ as you pull up to the Adler. You walk into the group entrance and you hear […]

Header Image: Total lunar eclipse on July 7, 2018. Here’s your stargazing guide for November 2022 to help you spot planets and celestial events—including a total lunar eclipse visible in Chicago! Time To Set Your Clocks Back Daylight Saving Time ends on November 6, at 2:00 am local time. This is the day to set […]

Header Image: Hubble Space Telescope portrait of Jupiter taken on June 27, 2019. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) Jupiter and Saturn appear during evening twilight, Mars continues to get brighter, and Mercury just might be visible this month, October 2022. Here’s your stargazing […]

Header Image: This is NGC 1365, the barred spiral galaxy a part of the Fornax Cluster. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC Dark matter. What is it? Why can’t we see it? And how is it related to dark energy and the Big Bang? Every day, we (the astronomers at the Adler Planetarium) get asked curious questions about […]

Header Image: The outside of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, IL at sunset in the fall. When you were a kid, you probably learned your ABC’s using stuff like, “A is for…apple” or “B is for…bee” or “C is for…cat” to represent each letter. While those options are all fine and good and cute, what if […]

Header image: Adler Planetarium graphic depicting the fall celestial event, Chicagohenge. Astronomical summer ends and the season of fall starts this month, September 2022. Here’s your stargazing guide for spotting daytime and nighttime celestial events as the seasons change and the nights grow longer. See Autumn’s Chicagohenge  This month the Sun sets about 50 minutes […]

Header Image: The JWST is being lifted into a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center before it was launched in December 2021. Image Credit: NASA/Desiree Stover In July 2022, the first images from the JWST captivated people all over the world, including here at the Adler Planetarium. This massive, collaborative effort to explore […]

Header Image: Astrophotography image of the Pleiades star cluster taken by Nick Lake.  One of the best meteor showers of the year occurs this month, August 2022. Here’s your stargazing guide to help you see as many meteors as possible—and to keep looking up throughout the month. Spot The Annual Perseids Meteor Shower What makes […]

Image Header: NASA’s Roving with Perseverance traveling exhibit in the Adler Planetarium’s Our Solar System exhibit.  If you work at the Adler Planetarium, you’ll be part of some pretty interesting things. But it’s not every day that you get to be part of a new exhibit installation, especially one from NASA! There is so much […]

Header Image: The Cosmic Cliffs in NGC 3324, also known as the Carina Nebula. This image was taken by the JWST and shows cosmic dust and gas a part of the nebula, but also previously obscured star nurseries and stars that we can now see with the space telescope’s infrared light. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, […]