The elegant Vanderbilt Museum's historic mansion is the former home of
William Kissam Vanderbilt II, great grandson of Commodore Cornelius.
The 43 acre estate overlooks Northport Harbor and the Long Island Sound.
Visitors take guided tours of the mansion or may wander through the
museum's many exhibits on their own. The Vanderbilt museum also has a
238 seat state of the art planetarium which features 3 different shows
on weekends and holidays. It is one of the largest and best-equipped in
the United States. In addition to its domed theater where Sky shows
recreate celestial events, there is also an Observatory with a
professional-grade 16-inch Cassegrainian reflecting telescope through
which visitors may scan the real sky on clear evenings, or, during the
day, watch actual sunspots and solar prominences as transmitted live to
a television monitor in the Planetarium lobby. The 60-foot Sky Theater
houses a customized four ton Goto projection instrument which
reproduces the heavenly bodies: sun, moon, planets, and stars as well
as the imaginary coordinate lines traditionally used to map the
heavens. It can simulate the heavens at any moment in time from the
distant past to the future, as they appeared from any place on Earth.
The projector can show more than 11,300 stars - about the same number
of stars visible in the night sky under perfect atmospheric conditions.
Open year round.
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