Does Anyone Remember the Smithsonian Stellarium?

[Palanan]

Back in the day, around 1995, the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum had an exhibit on space exploration with two standout sections. The first was a small theater playing clips from Empire Strikes Back to illustrate basic physics, with a claymation Albert Einstein as the guide.

The second was the Stellarium, in a separate darkened alcove, which used fiber-optics to create a three-dimensional map of nearby space, with over seven hundred accurately positioned stars. It had a short voice narration that introduced a number of local stars, highlighted by flashing LEDs.

It was exquisite, and the best museum exhibit I’ve ever seen for capturing both the scope and the serenity of interstellar space. But all exhibits must eventually close down, and now I’m wondering whatever happened to the Stellarium itself.

Does anyone remember this? And does anyone know where it ended up?

[Telonius]

Both of those were a bit before my time. I do have several friends working in museums and various other archives in the DC area, but unfortunately nobody at Air and Space.

The Air and Space Museum does have a Contact email on their website. I can tell you that this sort of question is one that they would love to get - there's a decent chance that the person answering the email either worked on it or knows who did.

For the Stellarium, I found a reference to it now being at a location in Delaware. The website looks pretty ancient, so that might not be accurate now.

[Palanan]

Thanks for the suggestion, I’d been planning to contact them. I’ve sent an inquiry to that address, but nothing back yet.

As for the website, that’s Jeff Carl’s old site. He and I corresponded for a while in the late 90s, but we’ve been out of touch for a very long time. He’d mentioned they might be transferring the Stellarium to Delaware, but I don’t know if that move ever happened.

[dafrca]

Thanks for the suggestion, I’d been planning to contact them. I’ve sent an inquiry to that address, but nothing back yet.

If you do find out, please post the answer you get. It would be fun to know what happened to it.

[Telonius]

Still curious about this one - Palanan, did you ever find any more?

[Palanan]

Thanks for checking in, and indeed I did.

Without going into detail, the Stellarium still exists and is in long-term storage. It took me a lot of effort to confirm that, and I still don't have the full story, but there's hope that one day it will be on display again.