Planetarium

This guide to the Planetarium in Montreal starts with an unlikely pitch in the early 1960s, when chemistry professor and amateur astronomer Pierre Gendron convinced a brewery he sat on the board of to bankroll a planetarium for Canada's centennial. It follows the Dow Planetarium from its 1966 opening through the millions of visitors who tilted their heads back under its dome, its closure in 2011, and the twin aluminum cones that replaced it. The cones were built around theatres named Chaos and Milky Way, the metal chosen for being light, tough and endlessly recyclable.