Almost three stories above you is a large sky dome, at its center the Foucault pendulum is attached. This is the North point in the sky, and for us, at the North Pole, the pole star is pretty close to the zenith.
Here is a map of what you see when you look up:
But wait! Look closer! Something is wrong with the sky! You may want to select the sky view above with your mouse, and instead you will see a close up star map of the sky near the pole.
The star maps have fewer stars, and you will see the constellations marked with stick figures. The map also contains azimuth and altitude makings, the dashed line is the path of the sun among the stars during the summer months.
Ursa Minor and Polaris are not where they should be. Could it be we are not at the North Pole? No! We are at the Pole, but here is a surprise. The Museum staff created the sky dome to look like it did to the primitive men who lived around the time Stonehenge was first being worked on. In 2000 BC the star Thuban in the constellation Draco, the dragon, was the closest bright start to the pole. Thuban is also called Alpha Draconis, a magnitude 3.6 star.
The sky dome itself is motorized and kept synchronized with the stars outside,
even during the half a year that the sun is in the northern hemisphere. So in
this museum you can always see the sky, no matter what the weather, no matter
the time of year. It's just four thousand years off where it should be.
