Heavens Above

Star gazers in Germany have sat comfortably back in their planetaria (TIME, Feb. 13) and watched the earth move round the sun, the solar system gyrate. A lecturer has stood beside a colossal intricate mechanism, a steel cylindrical apparatus about 25 feet long with a great steel sphere at each end, bulbous with electric eyes. These were the stars and planets; each with its own motor to send it through any. desired orbit. Upon the huge domed ceiling, 75 feet across, the professor could project the sky as it looked to three shepherds of Judea on a certain cold night in December, or as it will look to the man in the street on any night in the year 5000.

Benito Mussolini, irked that the children of Germany should see the stars more clearly than the children of Fascismo, commanded that a great planetarium should be built by the firm of Carl Zeiss of Jena, Germany, and delivered over to Rome.

Last week Max Adler, vice president of Sears Roebuck & Co., deciding that the U. S. too must have its planetarium, gave $500,000 for its construction on the lake front island east of the Field Museum. Apparatus and instruments will be of the finest, having been ordered from Carl Zeiss, who promised delivery in the fall ot 1929. The 1933 world's fair will see the planetarium performing in its noble 200 foot hall; projecting more than 4,500 planets, planetoids, and stars in orbital motion upon a domed sky 100 feet in diameter.

Said Philanthropist Adler: "In giving the planetarium to Chicago, I have a threefold conception. . . . The third is to emphasize that all mankind, rich and poor, powerful and weak, as well as all nations, here and abroad, constitute part of one universe, and that under the great celestial firmament there is no division or cleavage, but rather interdependence and unity."