Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium — Attraction in Duluth

Looking for on offsite excursion during our 3-day 4th of July visit to Duluth this year, we opted to try the Planetarium at the College. Having fond memories of field trips in my youth to the one which used to be in Downtown Minneapolis, I figured that I would bring the family to the one in Duluth during our stay.

What a mistake that was.

After purchasing tickets and going into the planetarium itself.. I was surprised at just how small it was and how the seating was laid out. After choosing some seats in the middle.. we sat for a bit waiting for the show to start. While we were sitting, a couple of us were joking that it felt like the AC was broken. Unfortunately – once the show started – the host informed us that it indeed was. Yay.

When things got going, we were told that the show would be broken up into two parts: The first being and overview of some constellations and their legends/origins and the second part being a demo of what that nights sky would like using the Star Scope / Projector device in the middle of the room.

Instead of covering traditional legends and origins during the first act, they opted to cover lesser known stories from Chinese, Native American, etc. cultures. Unfortunately, these stories were not very interesting from what I could hear as the host wasn’t much of a public speaker. Combining those two items along with a full room of people in a small room with no AC in July.. I noticed a few people had dozed off (as was I on the verge myself).

After the conclusion of the disappointing first half of the program, I figured we could salvage this visit with the Star Projector and the view of the night sky. Sadly, that didn’t happen. The Star Projector failed about 5 minutes in and the host spent a good 10 minutes or so trying to figure out how to get it going again. I was getting up to leave by this point when another member of my party gave me ‘the look’ and told me to sit back down. We watched the host fumble with the Projector and her laptop for a bit – but she was unable to get it going even though (I thought)– she had mentioned being the one in charge of the place. Unable to get the Star Projector going, a blurry view of the night sky was eventually brought up using a laptop. I’m by no means an expert at identifying all constellations but can typically identify a few. With as blurry as the laptop-projected-sky was.. I was unable to identify anything up there. For context, it was so bad that I had a hard time seeing the big dipper even after it was pointed out.

When the ‘show’ wrapped up, we got the ‘thanks for attending and tell your friends pitch’. As bad as things were with the lack of AC, defective equipment, uninspired content.. I thought that refunds would be given on the way out. That was not in the...

our first trip to the planetarium was astronomy day 2023. tickets for the shows were first come first served and they were all claimed almost immediately. we got there right at opening and were lucky to get a few tickets. activities were mainly for children and it was pretty chaotic with all the running and screaming kids. the raffle tickets were also almost immediately sold out, we weren’t able to get any. i would give the event itself 2 stars. i give all 5 stars to the show (black holes) which was extremely interesting, visually appealing and to getting to view the moon through the telescopes outside, that was also a really unique and out of this...

Get yourself over to this planetarium! Had a private show and was not disappointed. My group had the best time and Jessica was an amazing host the whole time! Please go for a show and see some seriously...