 | |
  Shown within North Carolina | |
| Established | May 10, 1949 |
|---|---|
| Location | Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
| Coordinates | 35°54′50″N 79°03′01″W / 35.91399°N 79.05025°W |
| Type | Planetarium |
| Director | Todd R. Boyette |
| Public transit access | Chapel Hill Transit |
| Website | http://www.moreheadplanetarium.org/ |
Morehead Planetarium and Science Center is located on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a unit of the university, Morehead receives about one-third of its funding through state sources, one-third through ticket and gift sales, and one-third through gifts and grants.
First opened in 1949, the dome theater in planetarium was used to train astronauts from the Gemini, Apollo, Mercury, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz missions in celestial navigation. Eleven of the twelve astronauts who walked on the Moon trained at Morehead Planetarium. [1] Until the late 1990s, it contained one of the largest working Copernican orreries in the world. The facility was donated to the university by alumnus John Motley Morehead III who invested more than $3 million in the facility.[2]
- ^ "Astronauts who Trained at Morehead Planetarium". Morehead Planetarium. University of North Carolina. 7 December 2019. Archived from the original on 4 September 2023. Retrieved 2 October 2023.
- ^ "Wow, What a Place". Sundial. Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. Spring 2009.