The Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium is a combination natural science museum, history museum, and planetarium located in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Venue: Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium
Address: 1302 Main Street
Town: St. Johnsbury, US

The Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium is a combination natural science museum, history museum, and planetarium located in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. It was founded in 1890 by businessman, politician, naturalist, and collector Franklin Fairbanks. The museum and its buildings are on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The Eye on the Sky Weather Center is a meteorology and weather forecasting station operated regularly at the site since 1893. Meteorologists broadcast their unique weather forecasts for Vermont, New Hampshire, and areas immediately around the region, on Vermont Public Radio and Magic 97.7. The facility also produces daily weather forecasts for three newspapers: The Caledonian Record, Times Argus, and Rutland Herald. The Lyman Spitzer Jr. Planetarium, established in 1960, is located at the museum, and produces public astronomy shows, as well as educational classes on various space science topics. Other productions of the planetarium include the Eye on the Night Sky astronomy program for radio broadcast, and the Night Owl astronomy & spaceflight news articles for online and print publication. The town of St. Johnsbury had a long history with the Fairbanks family, having been the location of the Fairbanks Scales headquarters and factories since the 1820s, as well as several other mansions and estates owned by members of the family. Before founding the museum, Franklin Fairbanks had served as president of the company, which his father and uncle had founded. The location for the museum, a plot of land Fairbanks already owned in the St. Johnsbury village, had been inspected, approved, cleared, and prepared in 1889. Construction on the main building began with a ceremony on 4 July 1890 when Frances Clapp Fairbanks laid the cornerstone. The building was finished by spring 1891, opening to the public later that year. Designed by Lambert Packard, the building features red sandstone and limestone laid in Richardsonian-Romanesque style. The museum was expanded