On a Sunday afternoon in October, a 114-seat theater tucked inside a Bowling Green State University science building will try to answer a question most of us never think to ask: where did the stuff we're made of actually come from?
The show is called "Cosmic Recipe: Setting the Periodic Table," and it runs Sunday, October 18, 2026, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the BGSU Planetarium, housed in the Physical Sciences Building on Ridge Street. Admission is a suggested $2 donation. Doors close five minutes after the published showtime, so late arrivals are out of luck.
The premise comes straight from Carl Sagan. "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch," the astronomer wrote, "you must first invent the universe." The planetarium's own description leans into the line: "To make apple pie, you must first make the Universe." The show takes that quip seriously, tracing how the Big Bang and the interiors of stars forged the elements of the periodic table — the calcium in our teeth, the silicon in our smartphones, the carbon in an apple pie — and how supernovae scattered those elements across space to eventually become planets, people, and pastry.
It is not a homegrown production. "Cosmic Recipe" was produced by the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium at the Milwaukee Public Museum and is distributed to domes around the country; the University of Nebraska at Omaha, among others, has screened it. The full-dome program runs about 23 minutes, but BGSU pads it into a fuller hour: a live star talk showing the current evening sky comes first, and a question-and-answer period follows, with faculty and student presenters on hand.
The planetarium itself has a story worth knowing. It opened in 1984 as a public science theater and was extensively renovated in 2013 and 2014, when it gained a state-of-the-art SciDome video system. Under its 40-foot dome, that system can project the sky as it would appear from any point on Earth at any moment in time. The facility is operated by the Department of Physics and Astronomy and doubles as a classroom for BGSU astronomy courses year-round, which is part of why its public programming is so inexpensive: the equipment and the people are already there.
The Sunday afternoon slot matters. BGSU offers public shows most Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Sundays at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. from September through early May, and it is specifically the Sunday evening shows that are followed by public stargazing — weather permitting. The October 18 show is the 4:30 p.m. matinee, so the stargazing that follows the 7:30 p.m. show that same evening is the companion event.
When the weather does cooperate, the payoff is real. The observatory sits on the roof of the Physical Sciences Laboratory Building and houses a computer-operated DFM reflecting telescope with a half-meter — 20-inch — primary mirror, along with a sensitive CCD camera used for measuring the brightness and color of stars. A sky deck and several smaller portable telescopes are set up alongside it during public sessions, so visitors get to look through both research-grade and amateur equipment. Access is by elevator to the roof — press "R," which is unlocked at the start of the session — and the planetarium warns that the roof is colder and windier than the ground, so dressing warmly is advised. Cell phone lights are discouraged because dark adaptation takes time to build and seconds to destroy. If it is cloudy, rainy, foggy, or even partly cloudy, there is no stargazing that night; a recorded phone line at 419-372-8831 announces whether a session will be held.
There is something quietly fitting about the pairing. A show about how the universe manufactured the elements ends with visitors standing on a rooftop, looking through a telescope at the very stars that did the manufacturing. The carbon in the apple pie and the calcium in your teeth were, as the show puts it, cooked up in stellar furnaces and flung outward in colossal explosions — and on a clear October night in Bowling Green, you can look up at the leftovers.
For anyone who has never been inside a planetarium, or who last visited one on a school field trip decades ago, this is an unusually low-stakes way to see what a modern dome can do. Two dollars, an hour, and a short walk from a campus parking lot buys a tour from the Big Bang to the periodic table — and, if the sky is clear, a look through a 20-inch telescope afterward.
The planetarium asks that visitors needing accessibility services contact BGSU Accessibility Services in advance at [email protected] or 419-372-8495.