Astronomy Outreach Public Events

Over seven months in the Artic Circle, crews captured timelapse images of the Aurora Borealis with high resolution fisheye lenses. The results are spectacular. The aurora has been captured as it was meant to be experienced, as a display that covers the entire sky. This immersive show shares the science behind the aurora and tells the story of our quest to find and photograph the aurora.

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 nebulas 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.

The search for dark matter is the most pressing astrophysical problem of our time. We journey through completely immersive visualizations of dark matter evolution calculated on some of the world’s fastest supercomputers — cosmological visions on a truly vast scale, in which galaxies themselves are but points of light, distributed across far larger intergalactic structures of dark matter.

“From Earth to the Universe” takes the audience out to the colorful birthplaces and burial grounds of stars and still further out beyond the Milky Way to the unimaginable immensity of myriad galaxies. Learn about a journey of celestial discovery, from the theories of the ancient Greek astronomers to today’s grandest telescopes, we invite you to experience “From Earth to the Universe.”

For thousands of years, humans observed the light coming from the night sky with their eyes. In the beginning of the 17th century, Galileo’s invention of the telescope revolutionized our knowledge of the universe. But it is not only light that can give us information about the cosmos. Neutrinos and cosmic rays also provide vital information. This video presents images of the cosmos as revealed by these different messengers.

Using immersive visualizations and real images, “The Hot and Energetic Universe” presents the achievements of the modern astronomy, the most advanced terrestrial and orbital observatories, the basic principles of electromagnetic radiation and the natural phenomena related to high-energy astrophysics. This science probes hot gas in clusters of galaxies where hot gas is accreting around supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, neutron stars, supernova remnants and stars like our sun, emitting copious amounts of high-energy radiation. These are the most massive objects in the universe.

“Two Small Pieces of Glass: The Amazing Telescope” follows two students as they interact with an astronomer at a local star party. Along the way, the students learn the history of the telescope from Galileo’s modifications to a child’s spyglass — using two small pieces of glass — to the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the future of astronomy. Aiming to engage and appeal to audiences of all ages, the show explores the wonder and discovery made by astronomers throughout the last 400 years.

Follow the history of the Earth, moon and sun system. Learn how the moon formed and how these three objects interact to create tides, phases of the moon and eclipses.