Chicago’s Adler Planetarium has a marvelous collection of antiques, pertaining to Astronomy!
Who knew?
HOW CHARMING ! (LINK)
A bit off-topic but today I was reading:
On 7 May 1925, the world’s first projection planetarium officially opened to the public at the Deutsches Museum. The Zeiss Model I displayed 4,500 stars, the band of the Milky Way, the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Gears and motors moved the projector to replicate the changes in the sky as Earth rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun. Visitors viewed this simulation of the night sky from the latitude of Munich…
I was just at the Adler Planetarium last week. They certainly do have some of that stuff on display. While they might not have all the specific items in that blog post on display, I certainly saw similar items that were. I’m sure they just don’t have the floor space to display all of their collection at one time. But I definitely saw plenty of antique sun dials, telescopes, astrolabes, sextants, and other antique astronomy instruments.
Went to Adler in April and thoroughly enjoyed the Space Race memorabilia they had on display, in particular the Gemini 12 capsule and the Moon rock. Small place, but enough stuff to browse to hold your interest while you wait for the Pink Floyd show.
The Hayden Planetarium attached to the American museum of Natural History in New York, before they bulldozed the old building and replaced it with one where a model of a sun is the planetarium dome, had an exhibit called “Astronomia”
https://data.library.amnh.org/archives-authorities/id/amnhc_4000090
Pictures here, but not really good ones:
This is better:
There were also antique instruments around the planetarium outside that exhibit. I have no idea what happened to all of that after they revamped.
Me!!!