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Atlas Obscura has lots of interesting places worldwide, but you can search by country etc. http://atlasobscura.com/globe/north-america/united-states I'd recommend visiting the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org/ While in Vegas we meant to visit the Neon Museum, but never made it http://www.neonmuseum.org/ (Think it's also known as the Neon Boneyard) Other places I'd like to visit are the Sedan Crater, Nevada and the Trinity test site in New Mexico. Also, Griffiths Observatory in LA http://www.griffithobs.org/ which I think has a giant Tesla coil. California Academy of Sciences http://www.calacademy.org/ in SF appeals to me, after seeing it on the Discovery channel. Cheers, Phil UK

The Big Picture should also be mentioned:

http://bigpicture.caltech.edu/

and in porcelain form:

http://www.griffithobs.org/exhibits/bbigpicture.html

Others have also made the point that really cool astronomy projects are within the reach of "citizen scientists" with a modest budget.

Now this is a real planetarium!
I know, because I have worked in many of the world's best known planetariums.

there is a reason why one of the stars are called the north star. if you can pick that one out, you have north. last time i checked its of the tail of big bear ;)

another options is the sun and some observasions. recent discoverys have shown that vikings used a kind of sun "clock" to navigate. basicly a round disc with a peg in the center, and a arch drawn over the disc.

here is a article that talks about how it works at the end:
http://www.griffithobs.org/IPS%20Planetarian/IPSVi king.html

A modified table is here. I wonder if I can sue newspapers for discrimination because they don't include my starsign in their predictions.

Copies, eh?

If you check the caption on the NYT photo, it's credited to Reuters/Griffith Observatory (the latter is also the source of one of the "uninvolved experts" quoted in the text).

Now, the griffith observatory is currently closed to the public, but if you check their renovation news, you'll see that they're adding in a shiny new replica of the Farnese Atlas. Since they provided the photo, could they have just done a nice studio shot, or maybe one from the replicomat's catalog? After all, the lighting in the danish photo is pretty poor.
Now a real story would be if these were claimed to be from the s photos that the astronomer claimed to use for determining the age of the stars.
"Decidedly Nineteenth Century CE, or possibly 21st Century United States"

The definition of two full moons in a month is now "correct" due to common usage. The urban legend has now become fact.

Apparently the earlier definition has to due with the oocurance of two full moons in a season. This ties in with the supposed American indian names from the colonial era. (note that the several thousand indian tribes would likely have a variety of names, IF they bothered to name them) This is actually more closely related to the European system of moon names, from which we get things like "harvest moon", or the Pascal moon (before Easter) (More on which below)

There is this Folklore of the "Blue Moon" article An informative acticle is the Nasa Science Article on the subject, which traces the current usage to an old article in a 1946 Sky and Telescope Magazine.

Sky And Telescope has their own article on the subject, including their own mea culpa here: What's a Blue Moon? -- from Sky & Telescope. Describes how a 53-yr old mistake by Sky and Telescope propagated the modern definition of "Blue Moon."

In an article "Once in a Blue Moon", folklorist Philip Hiscock traced the calendrical meaning of the term "Blue Moon" to the Maine Farmers' Almanac for 1937. But a page from that almanac belies the second-full-Moon-in-a-month interpretation. With help from Margaret Vaverek (Southwest Texas State University) and several other librarians, we have now obtained more than 40 editions of the Maine Farmers' Almanac from the period 1819 to 1962. These refer to more than a dozen Blue Moons, and not one of them is the second full Moon in a month. What's going on here? [...]

The almanac also follows certain rules laid down as part of the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582. The ecclesiastical vernal (spring) equinox always falls on March 21st, regardless of the position of the Sun. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, and must contain the Lenten Moon, considered to be the last full Moon of winter. The first full Moon of spring is called the Egg Moon (or Easter Moon, or Paschal Moon) and must fall within the week before Easter.

At last we have the "Maine rule" for Blue Moons: Seasonal Moon names are assigned near the spring equinox in accordance with the ecclesiastical rules for determining the dates of Easter and Lent. The beginnings of summer, fall, and winter are determined by the dynamical mean Sun. When a season contains four full Moons, the third is called a Blue Moon.

Why is the third full Moon identified as the extra one in a season with four? Because only then will the names of the other full Moons, such as the Moon Before Yule and the Moon After Yule, fall at the proper times relative to the solstices and equinoxes.

The astronomer Tycho Brahe actually died as the result of a burst bladder, because he was too embarrassed to step out for a whiz during a dinner party.

Sorry, urban legend. Most likely he died of mercury poisoning.

I have heard the "bladder bursting" meme before, sometimes it's a flag bearer at a Nobel dinner, sometimes a diplomat visiting a king/emperor/vizier...
Unless you get a kidney stone lodged in your urethera and a complete stop, I doubt it is anatomically possible to "keep it in" until your bladder pops.

Other cool stuff in San Fran: The Exploratorium and California Academy of Sciences.

Heading down the coast, there's The Tech Museum in San Jose

There's Fry's stores all the way through California, and they have neat themes like alien invason, alice in wonder land, ancient rome, etc. (I plan to pilgrimage to all of them at some point.) Although they are getting to be more like a giant consumer electronics store than somewhere to go for parts.

Unfortunately it looks like the Griffith Observatory is closed, but I'm sure there's plenty of other geek stuff in LA that people could point you to. There's just so much that nothing uniquely cool comes to mind.

In San Diego we have Balboa Park which has a aerospace museum, model railroad museum, automotive museum, etc, plus the Zoo. And there's the Wild Animal park. And the Birch Aquarium up here at UCSD. And the Gaslamp area, which has good bars ;-)

Well, If you want Geeksih how about this:

Palamar Telescope.

Then again there is Cal Tech in Pasadena.

Next you can stop at JPL.

There is also Mt. Wilson above Los Angeles.

Of course you could also goto Griffith Observatory but it's closed for a renovation.

All these are in the San Diego/Los Angeles area.

Heck, if you are into art/old books/old stuff there is the Getty.

And of course the Huntington with their copy of the Guttenburg bible.

We also have Edwards Airforce Base which is where the shuttle use to land, but they put on a heck of an air show.

And when traveling to the LA area you need to fly into the Burbank airport. They built the SR-71, the F117 and several other toys right there...

When you are done with Los Angeles area head on up to the San Fransisco area and check out the Valley. I'm sure a couple more people here can fill you in on those spots.

MAn I think I'm going to love looking at this thread!