Planetarium Programs and Exhibits

New Horizons

From breathtaking landscapes to violent volcanic eruptions to the sheer beauty of Saturn's rings, New Horizons immerses audiences in an unforgettable all-dome-video experience. Explore the planets and moons of the solar system in a majestic journey through our celestial neighborhood. For the first time, audiences will travel down to the surface of all the planets, and experience what life would be like from those brave new worlds. Our journey begins as we follow a comet as it travels through interplanetary space. On each of our exotic ports of call, real data and images from modern space probes is transformed into stunning 360° photo-realistic 3D animation.

Secrets of the Sun

Get an intimate look at the role the sun plays in the life of our solar system. From the nuclear forces churning at the heart of the sun to the mass ejections of solar material in to surrounding space, you will experience the power of the sun and its impact on the planets and ultimately life on Earth. Secrets of the Sun traces the life cycle of the sun itself, going back to its beginnings and moving forward in time to its eventual death.

Seven Wonders

Turn back the pages of time and witness the ancient wonders of the world as they have not been seen for thousands of years. We will investigate the theories of how these wonders were created and get a glimpse of some of the universe's greatest wonders.

Seven Wonders is narrated by British actor Sean Bean, who played Boromir in the feature film trilogy Lord of the Rings.

Universe

An historical look at how we have envisioned the universe though the ages. We visit some of the ancient sites where our ancestors erected great structures with special astronomical significance. Finally we look at the Universe through the eyes of today's science and space explorers to build up a spectacular overview of the heavens.

Wonders of the Universe

Peer deep into space through the eyes of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and travel back billions of years in time to witness the birth of the universe. On this breathtaking excursion you'll witness the formation of galaxies and explore some of the most wondrous nebulae and astronomical structures yet discovered. As your travels continue, you'll fly deep into our own Milky Way galaxy and return home to Earth on a spectacular tour through the solar system.

Journey to Infinity

Our search for the secrets of life in the universe begins with an exploding supernova. We'll see how cataclysmic events like this have helped shape and form the universe we know today. Starting with a Space Shuttle flight around planet Earth, we take an interactive journey through our solar system. Travel down to the surface of Mars to find an unmanned probe on the planet. Explore the oceans under the frozen surface of Europa for signs of internal volcanism and even life. Witness the death and birth of stars, and unlock the secrets of mankind's essential connection with the universe.

The Future is Wild

Based on a wildly successful international television series that has been broadcast in over 60 countries around the world, The Future is Wild gives audiences a glimpse at what might be the future of the animal kingdom on planet Earth. An international team of researchers has been looking into how animals and plants will change and evolve over the next 5 to 200 million years. And a team of over 100 animators and scholars has transformed their ideas into creatures that fly, walk and swim on the earth of the future. This 20-minute immersive show lets your audience experience a future fantastic, based upon real science.

Stars of the Pharaohs

Travel to ancient Egypt to see how science was used to tell time, make a workable calendar, and align huge buildings. You'll learn about the connection the ancient Egyptians felt with the stars and various astronomical phenomena. And thanks to the time Digital Theater's production team spent on location in Egypt taking photographs and measurements, you'll see some of the most spectacular temples and tombs of the ancient world recreated in their original splendor.

Hubble Space Telescope Images

This image was unveiled at The Science Place and nationally on January 11, 2006. 
The Orion Nebula, a cavern of rolling dust and gas some 1,500 light-years away, is the nearest star-forming region to Earth. This image is the sharpest ever taken of the nebula.  The bright central region is home to the four heftiest stars in the nebula, collectively called the Trapezium. Ultraviolet light from them is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. Nearby are stars still young enough to have disks of material encircling them, too small to be seen clearly in this image. The disks are the building blocks of solar systems. Faint red stars near the bottom are myriad brown dwarfs. Sometimes called “failed stars,” brown dwarfs are cool objects too small to be ordinary stars because they cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. Astronomers used 104 five-color Hubble images to make this composite picture, adding ground-based photos to fill out the edges. The mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon. The observations were taken between 2004 and 2005.

Whirlpool Galaxy

The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194) appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. They are actually long lanes of stars and gas laced with dust. This sharpest-ever image, taken in January 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, illustrates a spiral galaxy's grand design, from its curving spiral arms, where young stars reside, to its yellowish central core, a home of older stars. The galaxy is nicknamed the Whirlpool because of its swirling structure.

The Whirlpool's most striking feature is its two curving arms, a hallmark of so-called grand-design spiral galaxies. Many spiral galaxies possess numerous, loosely shaped arms which make their spiral structure less pronounced. These arms serve an important purpose in spiral galaxies. They are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars. In the Whirlpool, the assembly line begins with the dark clouds of gas on the inner edge, then moves to bright pink star-forming regions, and ends with the brilliant blue star clusters along the outer edge.

Some astronomers believe that the Whirlpool's arms are so prominent because of the effects of a close encounter with NGC 5195, the small, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms. At first glance, the compact galaxy appears to be tugging on the arm. Hubble's clear view, however, shows that NGC 5195 is passing behind the Whirlpool. The small galaxy has been gliding past the Whirlpool for hundreds of millions of years.

Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/AURA)
 

Eagle Nebula

Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.

Inside the gaseous tower, stars may be forming. Some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsing under gravity. Other stars may be forming due to pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighboring hot stars. The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system. The fledgling stars continued to grow as they fed off the surrounding gas cloud. They abruptly stopped growing when light from the star cluster uncovered their gaseous cradles, separating them from their gas supply.

The dominant colors in the image were produced by gas energized by the star cluster's powerful ultraviolet light. The blue color at the top is from glowing oxygen. The red color in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen. The Eagle Nebula image was taken in November 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)