Photograph by Jeremy Kramer
One small room in the Trailside Nature Center at Burnet Woods contains the entire cosmos. The Wolff Planetarium may only be able to fit 18 people under its dome, but the top-of-the-line Digitarium Iota projector can take guests to the far reaches of the galaxy with high-res views of stars, planets, constellations, nebulas, historical simulations of the night sky, and more. While the planetarium has been educating and wowing guests since the 1950s, its invention was a happy accident—the dome was built as a Frank Lloyd Wright-style architectural flourish without any practical use in mind.
“The first naturalist here thought that it might serve as a place to do star shows,” says Trailside Nature Center Director Michael George. “During the bulk of the year the room was set up with natural history displays. During the winter months they’d remove all the collections, install the projector on its stand, hang the blackout curtains, and run the shows.”
It’s now a full-time planetarium, but many public shows still take place in the winter while nature and astronomy camps take over the space in summer. Adds George, “Just to have this opportunity here in Cincinnati to see a star show and have such an intimate experience where it’s a live narrated program with interaction and storytelling really makes us come alive.”
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