Ear on Chicago; Unidentified (Possibly Unidentified Flying Objects)

The voice you're hearing is out of Mr. Albert V. Schetzel, who is the director of the Adler Planetarium. Mr. Schetzel is just finishing a lecture in the Planetarium Chamber. Many people call this the theater of the sky. And this is Hugh Hill speaking to you from the theater of the sky, bringing you the story of Chicago's famous Adler Planetarium. Mr. Schetzel will be over here on the microphone in just a few moments and we'll be talking to him. He's just finished his lecture and he's approaching the Planetarium instrument right now. When he gets here I'm going to ask him to describe the instrument. This is probably the most important part of the Planetarium. To describe the Planetarium to you, if you've never seen it, it's located out almost on an island. It's really a peninsula out into the lake and located at approximately 12th Street and Lake Michigan in Chicago. It's got a huge dome at the top. It's a beautiful building of many sides. I didn't count them so I'm not sure how many. But it is a magnificent scene

indeed on the lake shore of the city of Chicago. Mr. Schetzel, what is a Planetarium? Well a Planetarium is technically any device that will show us the motions of the planets. This particular instrument is more complete than the usual one and it is of a different sort than the ordinary mechanical Planetarium we see in most museums. Now to begin with, who designed this? Well this is a product of the Zeiss Company, the same people that make binoculars and microscopes and so on, cameras, telescopes, was made in Yehna in Germany back in 1930. This is a very intricately designed mechanism which as I understand it through a series of lights, flashes, pictures of the stars up on this dome in this room where we're standing. Is that right? Yes, this is called an optical Planetarium because it reproduces the sky optically. The big dome you see overhead is just a motion picture screen. It is 180 degree projection and projects half a sphere which

brings us right to the horizon. You see in all directions. The projector itself produces about 9 ,000 stars which is perhaps half again as many as we ordinarily see in a good dark sky with the unated eye so it gives a very nice impression of the sky. The stars themselves are projected by 32 separate projectors. You see on either end of the main axis of the machine here in the big globes, those projectors each project about 300 stars so we have altogether around 9 ,000. Then in addition there are moving projectors which are housed in the cages you see between the two globes on the machine and those project the planets and the sun and moon which move about among the stars. The moving projectors are all geared together with the main motions of the machine to reproduce all the motions we see in the naked eye sky. And when you say it's a horizon it's precisely the fact because at the lower part of this dome is the skyline of the city of Chicago etched in black. Is that painted up on that dome? No, it's

cut out of the metal. The dome comes down to the horizon line and then the outlines of the buildings and trees and whatnot are all carefully cut out with a pair of tingears actually from photographs and that gives us the idea of the sun setting behind the buildings. When anything comes down to the horizon it just disappears because there is just a big space behind these cut out of the buildings you see. Some of the buildings certainly are very recognizable from their shadows, the prudential building, the newest skyscraper in Chicago and far over to the right is the furniture marked and then way out to the right is the navy pier and then even out in the lake it's a picture of the crib isn't it? Yes, everything you would see any size at all is reproduced just in its proper direction as it would be seen from the outside of this building. Now as the stars and the planets are projected onto this screen, onto this

dome, a lecturer stands over there and speaks over a microphone and describes what is happening just as you were doing. Is that right? Yes, the idea of the lecture is to demonstrate all of the motions and all the various phenomena in astronomy, just as they would be seen in the sky and at the same time to give all the information which is necessary in connection with that, so that during each month we have different topics, sometimes it is something of particular current interest and over a period of about two years with a different lecture each month we can cover the field of astronomy in this way. Last month I understand you did the story of the calendar and what is it this month? Well this month we're going to talk about the space satellite in which a lot of people seem to be interested on the kind of the international geophysical year which is just coming up. Well that's very interesting, I'd like to talk to you about that but let's go back to the month of May just briefly, what was

calendar, what did that mean? Well the calendar you know is strictly an astronomical device, it is one of the few really practical applications of astronomy to our everyday lives. The calendar is essentially a time keeping device like a watch or a clock except that it keeps the longer intervals of time and it has a very fascinating history and during the month of May particularly we have a lot of youngsters visiting the museum from the various schools and this is one place where astronomy touches their everyday lives so we quite often include this topic during this busy month of the year for the school children particularly. And how did you show them how the astronomy affects the calendar? Well we began with the rotation of the earth which gives us the basic unit of time which is the day and then showed them just in passing that the day has been divided into shorter intervals, hours and minutes and seconds and so on. Then from the motion of the moon we introduced the longer intervals of time beginning with the story of the American Indians and their lunar calendar,

you know so many moons ago and so many moons from now and so on the children are always interested in that. And then from that we go to the more complicated relationships with the motion of the earth about the sun, the introduction of the leap year because of the quarter of a day which is added each year to the 365 required for the earth to go about the sun and we bring in little of the history of the calendar and certain facts that are of some interest youngsters. The fact that George Washington for instance was born on the 11th of February and not the 22nd so on that kind of thing. Really? I didn't know that. Well he thought Abraham Lincoln was born on the 11th his birthday? No that's the 12th of grade. George Washington was born back in 1732 when the old calendar was in use so I just called the Julian calendar and he was born on the 11th of February 1752, 20 years later 11 days were omitted from the calendar in order to bring it back into agreement with the Gregorian

calendar which had been in use by the Catholics for almost two centuries. Of course the Protestants would have nothing to do with it and then finally when the Gregorian calendar was adopted those 11 days had to be omitted from the calendar and that was done in September of 1752. George Washington came of age he was 21 the following spring and he had to decide whether his birthday should be on the 11th as it always had been or whether he should make it an anniversary and just count 365 days so to speak from his last one which of course would bring it around to the 22nd and he decided as I suppose any wise person would that a birthday is an anniversary so he had it changed legally to the 22nd of February which is what we recognize today is the birthday of George Washington. Well that's a very interesting story one which I've never heard about one of the founders of our country our first president. Well now Mr. Chantel how are you going to talk about the earth satellite that isn't even up there yet? No it's not so much problem of

describing it as dear but as it will be you'll see the problem of launching an earth satellite is strictly an astronomical problem too it's a matter of understanding what laws govern the motions of bodies moving about the earth. This will be man's first opportunity to project his knowledge of these laws to reality by causing one body to move about another in space actually of course it isn't the first step to space travel as most people imagine it has a little more down to earth significance than that it's a matter of studying the earth's upper atmosphere and the object is to get this thing up there far enough so that the friction with the air won't bring it down right away. So when we discuss this problem we start off with our natural moon and show why it moves around the earth as it does and then we show what a projectile would do being launched at various altitudes and various levels and various directions and velocities in moving about the earth. We try to establish first of all that if you throw a rock up in the air it is following an orbit just like the moon about the earth

but it's orbit around the center of mass of the earth brings it so close to the center of the earth that it collides with the surface on the way down. Well do you know precisely how high this earth satellite has to be how far away from the earth so that it will get in an orbit without coming back down through the pressure of gravity? That's a rather difficult problem. From a practical point of view it will do to have it on the average anywhere from 200 to 800 miles up. The higher the average altitude as it goes about the earth the longer it will remain loft so to speak. It is estimated now that if we can have it's a pair of g distance as we call it that is the point closest to the earth, a minimum of 200 miles and its apogee the point furthest from the earth say 800 miles or so that it will remain circuiting the earth for a matter of nine months to a year something on that

order. Do you think this is going to work? Oh sure the problem is no longer whether it will work but how soon can we make it work? The project has been delayed now several times and I suspect it won't be actually underway until next spring sometime past the first of the year at any rate. Well there are so many interesting problems to that Earth satellite and I suppose you and I could stand here and talk about it all afternoon but we're doing the story of the Adler Planetarium and the Earth's satellite has only to do that part of the Adler Planetarium which comes in the month of June. Now I would like to move on out into the outer halls with you Mr. Schachel and look at some of the things that happen out there but before we leave this theater of the sky this room which houses this planetarium the instrument I would like first of all to say something about the room itself other than what we have said and that is the fact that it's a dome it has the Chicago skyline and it has the instrument itself. Now just below the skyline there are a number of seats setting in a complete 360

degree circle. How many seats do you have in here? Well we have 485 all together so that they have a pretty good capacity and they can get a lot of people in here to watch the lectures. How often are the lectures? Well the lectures are given every week day including Saturday at 11 o 'clock and three o 'clock and on Tuesday and Friday evening at 8. The Sunday schedule is in the afternoon only at two o 'clock and 330 and Sunday is not a good day to come we turn to weigh more than a thousand people last Sunday and I'd say considerably more than that the weekend before so it's good to avoid Sunday if you can help it. How do they come during the weeks, during the week mostly school children? Well the lecture at 11 o 'clock in the morning every week day is given four school children and they're admitted free of charge to that lecture and we admit them in groups only by reservation so if anyone wants to bring a class for instance they have to call and make a reservation and that has to be done roughly two weeks in advance because we're booked solid that far ahead of time. Before we leave this room there are some very good pros which is put out in the booklet which is simply titled Adler Planetarium

and Astronomical Museum. The museum is what we're going to see in just a moment but I would like to read from this the very first page which is titled a theater of the sky and you'll get a better idea I think of just what the room does. It goes like this here is a theater of the sky where the eternal heavens in all their majesty and splendor are portrayed with a realism and a vividness that defy description. Here you will see the night skies as they appear under ideal conditions away from the glare of city lights far from the dulling haze of dust and smoke. By manipulation of the marvelous planetarium instrument the lecturer can reproduce the skies as they appeared thousands of years ago or as they will appear far into the future from any position on our planet earth. You may journey thousands of miles to the north to see the wonder of the midnight sun and the northern lights or south below the equator to see the southern cross without stirring from your

chair in the planetarium chamber. In this room time and space are the tools of the lecturer used freely to explain and demonstrate celestial phenomena beautifully and dramatically. Planetarium shows are changed each month as Mr. Schatzel mentioned. They have had since January, stars of winter, February was how the earth moves, march the seasons, April, wanderers in space, May the calendar and now June, satellite vanguard. Now I think it's time for us to go on out into the hall and the people who are listening to the program will understand when I say that this room has marvelous acoustics when they hear the change because when we go out there it will bring us back to a somewhat hollow sound but in here the acoustics are extremely good aren't they? Yes this room was designed with that in mind of course. All right let's move on out into the hall and look at some of the famous things they have out there in their museum. As I mentioned briefly while we were in the planetarium

the actor planetarium is made up of actually two things the planetarium and what they call the museum and we are in what they call a museum right now. It's a corridor which completely circles the planetarium and on both sides are pictures some old instruments which were used in the study of astronomy many years ago and something that we're standing in front of right now a telescopic view of Mars done in color it's a globe which keeps circling and it's a very beautiful thing because it's against a black background and it stands out uniquely here in the museum. What is this Mr. Schatzel and what do you have it here for? Well we made this just after the last opposition of Mars or during the last opposition of Mars to show people well when Mars is closest to the earth it is opposite the direction of the sun in the sky so we call that opposition and the closest opposition of Mars occurred intervals of 15 or 16 years something on that order and

last year during September Mars was as close to the earth as it had been for 17 years time since 1939 and of course observations were made of the planet everywhere around the world and from those observations which were available to us shortly after the opposition was over we made this model of the planet which is simply a globe painted with all the details that were visible during the last opposition for people who are acquainted with Mars they recognize these details just as a geographer would recognize the continents and various land forms of the earth the green is vegetation while we wouldn't say that actually it is popularly supposed to be so the green is not so vivid as it appears visually you'll see the green here in this model as it appears to the eye but actually it is not quite that vivid if we take subjective colored measures of it or objective measures we'd call them instrumentally nobody knows exactly what the green

color is maybe due to some sort of chemical change or it may be due to a low form of vegetation it would have to be a single cell form the color does progress in a wave from the poles of the planet which are white during the winter season at either pole down across the surface reaching the equator in what would be the late spring of the Martian year is the white snow yes the white is definitely snow well really you would call it ice crystals it has been shown to be so by infrared observations is there any life at all outside of the possible vegetable life all certainly not Mars is not suited for any type of life really it comes within an ace of being able to support life and that's why we since we have this marginal problem there is so much interest in it the atmosphere and Mars is about what it is here on the earth so far as density is concerned at a level of 70 ,000 feet and you see

we wouldn't be very well off here if we were to be that high in our own atmosphere we'd be awfully cold too no I'm afraid so the surface of Mars at night is down around I would say 90 degrees below zero something in that order and during the daytime at the equator it may get up so high as 50 degrees or so is earth the only planet on which there is known life yes it is yes definitely now let you and I walk over here to see some of the instruments Mr. Schatzel every time you and I get on a subject why we begin to talk it out and it's not a waste of time by any matter or means but by the same token we've got to cover some more ground here now we're standing in front of a case which says antique telescopes and I suppose that's precisely what they are yes some of these are the earliest astronomical telescopes made there is a model of the original Galilean telescope made by Galileo Galilei in 1610 and there are several instruments of similar

vintage most of these are from the 17th and 18th centuries there are several very fancy ones as you can see one of them is overlaid with silver filigree at once belong to King Philip of Spain so some of them are valuable because they belong to famous people others are valuable because they were the work of early instrument makers who themselves were famous opticians in general how valuable well we don't ordinarily state the value of these items but they are valued in many thousands of dollars per item some of the telescopes apparently were made out of wood yes many of the early instruments were the reason being that metal was so difficult to work during the 16th century if you wanted to make a metal tube you couldn't just extrude it you had to beat it into a flat piece and then roll it up and then brace it together and all together was very difficult what's under this dome shaped glass over here sitting in the center of the corridor well that is a Tolorean clock it is a clock which shows the time in addition

to a dial by the rotation of the earth and therefore you can read the time in various parts of the world very readily by just walking around looking at the globe and in addition the moon is shown and it's no i beg your pardon this one doesn't show the moon this has the sun at the center with the earth going around it so that the seasons are properly shown so on we're still on this one side of the corridor this is the south side of the building and we want to move over to the other side of the building and before we do just briefly would you tell us what these photographs are down here looked like a lot of stars perhaps comets I guess they're comets down there well the ones you see down at the end of this hall are comets we have through the building number of transparencies there are seventy or eighty of them displaying some of the finest celestial photographs they cover everything from the solar system out to the most remote galaxies we only have a few minutes left and I would like to take a look at the other side of the building so we better move

now we have moved over to the north side of the building we're standing right in front of what is known as astrolaves enclosed in a large glass case and I haven't the slightest idea what they are well the astrolabe is an antique astronomical instrument these are among the most valuable items in the men's collection which is housed in the museum these instruments were made for the most part during the sixteenth century the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and they were combination navigation devices and calculating devices that were very useful in the early days of navigation and nautical astronomy the compare to our sextant well the sextant has in part displaced the astrolabe the astrolabe served number of functions the same kind of thing as we can do with modern celestial globe in the way of computing the times of rising and setting of objects and the altitudes of things above the horizon and so on and in addition

the regular sort of observations one might make with a sextant the determination of time either by night or by day and the kind of calculations one makes with the slide rule and mathematical tables all these things were combined in the one device unless one understands astronomy these instruments are complicated but over here is a diagram of the astrolabe and actually the parts set off one by one there are two there that are not identified what are they well they're just more tablets oh I see well now how do they work well the main framework of the instrument which is called the mother is engraved around its conference with altitude and time circles and on the back with various mathematical devices while it serves at the same time to hold the tablets and what we call the rate and the allodade of the instrument all supported on a pin through its center is called the mother principally because it has

this recess to hold all the other parts of the instrument down here to the left are some more well what are they they look like globes well those are what we call armillary spheres they are sometimes used in models as garden ornaments today but in the early days they had a serious purpose in teaching astronomy and making certain calculations as to the positions of bodies if you'll note these carefully you'll find that each of them has the earth at center because they were made at the time when the earth was supposed to be the center of the universe and therefore they are geocentric devices what's this instrument right out here in the center once again we have something in the center of the corridor well that is an old planetarium mechanical planetarium it has been considerably mutilated by visitors originally it had the globes of the planets on it it is a device which is operated by a weight is driven by a weight rather than by springs

and reproduce the motions of the solar system you say it was mutilated by the visitors you mean vandals came in here and tore it apart yes many visitors are prospective vandals partly because things look attractive you know little globes made of ivory and little gold devices of one sort or another and more and more in modern times museums have to enclose things in glass cases and the day when this museum was built the museums in germany after which this one was pattern had everything out in the open for instance one might leave a whole set of watchmakers tools out on a bench and they would remain there but nowadays you just can't do that sort of thing I don't know whether this is true in the old country as we say any longer but in our own country anything which is left out in the open and can be easily taken away will be removed in short order well that's certainly an amazing piece of information and a sad commentary I must say what's in that glass and closed case down

well the instruments you see there are mainly drawing instruments compasses three -legged dividers and devices of this sort which were used in early times in the design of other instruments so we have everything in the museum where instruments are concerned from the instruments used to design the instruments to the instruments themselves now we've visited the planetarium and we visit the south side of the building and the north side of the building to look at some of the displays they have at the museum we haven't had a chance to go over to the east side actually the west side is the entrance but what's over at the east side well in the east side we have mainly transparencies from the largest observatories the Mount Palomar Observatory including some of the most recent photographs taken and the 48 -inch myth telescope about which I understand most people must have heard by now the 200 -inch and the telescopes on Mount Wilson the offices are also located on the east side of the building the library and most of the

administrative functions are housed in that part of the building some of those transparencies that I was looking at a little while ago are amazing you have some pictures of Saturn which show the rings around Saturn those famous rings very distinctly yes the best photographs ever taken have been reproduced just for these transparencies which are very expensive and difficult to make and so visitors often question us as to whether the dates which are given on most of these don't show them up as being rather ancient which is some of the best pictures taken for instance of Saturn were made many years ago and could never be replaced with modern photographs well mr. Schatzel I wish we had more time to talk about the planetarium actually we've just barely skimmed the surface but as I said earlier in the program you and I could talk all afternoon about almost each individual subject that we have mentioned but we do want to thank you very much for allowing us to take this tour and for you are guiding us as we went through the planetarium well I'm certainly glad you could

come I hope you'll come back again and that's the story of the after planetarium in Chicago this is Hugh Hill speaking