Date: July 13, 2009
Title: Windy City Astronomy
Podcaster: Elizabeth Fracek
Organization: Museum of Science and Industry , Adler Planetarium
Description: In my podcast, I talk about the Adler Planetarium and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and how these places inspired me toward my interest in astronomy. I give some facts about the museums themselves, but the focus will be on how they inspired me. I’m a total space junkie, and that’s ironic since I grew up in the third largest city in the country and couldn’t actually see any stars due to light pollution.
Bio: I am an English and Speech teacher in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, but I was born and raised in the Windy City, Chicago. I have been a space and astronomy nut since before I can remember. My dream from that time has been to be an astronaut, but unfortunately, my feet remain firmly on the ground, even though my head is usually in the stars.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by a generous person who wishes to remain anonymous.
Transcript:
Hello! My name is Elizabeth Fracek and I’m a high school English teacher in northeast Oklahoma. Most people would think that that doesn’t give me much right to say anything about astronomy, and *laugh* they’re right. Even though I’m not an astronomer or even a scientist by trade, what I do have is a lifelong fascination and curiosity about the world around me, and especially the world far above me. That fascination has inspired me to talk today about two of my favorite astronomy-themed places a little closer to home. Even though I live in Oklahoma now, I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and the places I’m thinking of are both located there: the Adler Planetarium and the Museum of Science and Industry.
Due to the overwhelming amount of light pollution gracing the Windy City, it seems almost ludicrous that any Chicagoan would have much interest in the night sky, seeing how little we see of it. Chicago night skies are this bright violety-pink color even on the clearest nights, and all but the brightest stars are overshadowed by that haze of reflected city lights. So I certainly did not come by my love of the universe the way many astronomers did, from sitting out in the backyard looking heavenward. I came by my passion for the stars in broad daylight, through visits to the Adler Planetarium and the Museum of Science and Industry’s space exhibit.
Both the Museum of Science and Industry and the Adler Planetarium (usually referred to in Chicago as simply “The Planetarium”) were frequent field trip destinations for my elementary schools, and I can recall that my class visited both museums at least once per year when I was in elementary school. On weekends or during the summer, my parents could often be convinced to take us to the museums as well, and I tried to take several trips each year.
My family and I moved to Oklahoma in 1994, when I was fourteen years old, but I have been back several times to visit my museums, the most recent in late December 2007 and early January 2008. The space exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry still resembles my childhood memory of it almost perfectly, even though much of the rest of the museum has changed, but The Planetarium was barely recognizable. I suppose such change is inevitable, but I don’t have to like it!
The space exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry hasn’t really changed much at all in the last 15 or so years. Or at least, it didn’t feel any different from my memories. They’ve still got a full-size space capsule at the heart of the exhibit, although I admit I can’t remember if it really went to the moon or if it’s just a full-size copy. Neil Armstrong still reminds us that it was “One small step for man” in a repeating video loop, and there are still model rockets everywhere.
The best part is that the space exhibit still serves as the lobby to the OmniMax Theater. I absolutely love the OmniMax – it’s a dome like at The Planetarium, but flopped over on its side. It’s big enough that when the photographers pan those cameras over the ancient ruins, it feels like the theater is really moving. It’s like an educational roller coaster.
The Planetarium, on the other hand, is only dimly recognizable today from the memories of my childhood, both within and without. When I was a kid, the entrance to The Planetarium was actually underground – we would get off the bus and walk down a long set of stairs under what looked like a big bus shelter to get to the entrance and admission desk. I would guess that more than half of The Planetarium was underground, and only a small fraction in the old building with the dome on top. The building aboveground had doors, but no one ever used them – in my childhood, they were always blocked off and held big signs saying “No entrance – enter underground” with an arrow pointing the way.
Downstairs, my favorite part was the scale model of the Solar System and the tall cylindrical booths that would calculate your weight on other planets. What I liked best about those booths was that all of them told your weight on Earth first, and none of them reported the same weight. As a kid, I found that hilarious, but as an adult, I guess they just weren’t calibrated all that often.
As with the Museum of Science and Industry, the main draw was the special movie theater. Actually, The Planetarium had two – the main domed theater on the very top level, and a more traditionally designed theater downstairs that sported three separate screens – a large one in the center, and a smaller one to each side. Shows would start downstairs in the traditional theater. We’d file in and would be briefly introduced to whatever the topic of the day was, and we’d all be squirming slightly in our seats, me especially, because we knew what was coming next. At the end of the show, the lights would come up just enough so we wouldn’t trip, and the center screen would rise about ten feet, revealing a small door behind it. The door would open to reveal an escalator lit on either side only by rows of tiny bulbs set into mirrors. To me, this was like getting a brief glimpse into infinity. I remember the feelings of awe and wonder, and also the sense of how small I was in the universal scheme of things, that I used to feel riding that escalator. The ride was never long enough.
The escalator led to the domed theater and the second half of the program.
The domed theater hasn’t changed at all, actually – it looked and even smelled exactly the same in 2009 as it had in 1989. The show I saw in 2009 did not utilize the theater downstairs, and I was afraid to ask if it was still in use for other shows. Some things I just don’t need to know.
Outside the theater, everything has been changed. The subterranean entrance is no longer in use and I can’t recall seeing a single familiar exhibit from my childhood visits. I felt both sadness and excitement at this – sadness that things had changed, but excitement that there was so much new stuff to see.
I was happy to discover that the basement was still in use, although there wasn’t anything there I recognized. In 2009, they were showing a historical perspective on astronomy, featuring lots of ancient tools and discussing lots of ancient reasons and methods to studying the sky. It was really cool.
The best part was that they’ve added on to The Planetarium. In the past, most of the exhibits had been underground, but now there’s a ring of glass-enclosed space surrounding the main structure, and there is a lot of really neat stuff there, too. That’s where the scale-model Solar System is now, along with a whole bunch of other cool spacey stuff.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my little tour through the places that inspired my love of astronomy. For more information, the Adler Planetarium can be found online at www.adlerplanetarium.org, and the Museum of Science and Industry can be found at www.msichicago.org. Have a great International Year of Astronomy!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the New Media Working Group of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks