Photo: Bente Lilja Bye
Christmas at Fishermans Wharf, San Francisco.

The American Geophysical Union is said to be the world's largest gathering of geoscientists. Remember that planet Earth is exactly that – a planet. So include a number of astronomers and astrophysicists in this herd of nerds, some 16000 of them actually. This gathering is misleadingly called The American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, when in fact it is more like a Christmas meeting as it takes place the week before Christmas every year in San Francisco, one of my favorite cities in the whole wide world.

In December an important climate change meeting will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark: The United Nations Climate Change Meeting or the so-called COP15 climate meeting.

Hitler's gift to astronomy? What?

Believe it or not, Hitler wanted to give Mussolini and Rome a planetarium*. Rome was among the first in the world to build a planetarium. Italy (and Mussolini) had already taken a planetarium as part of the 'compensation' for the damage Germany did to Italy in WW1 and opened the first Roman planetarium already in 1928.

It is the most peculiar story, so much so that I feel compelled to tell, however little, what I know about this hidden treasure of planetarium history...