Museum Heads to New York Comic Con

Friday, October 14 9:05 am

A lunar elevator is one of technologies featured in the upcoming exhibition Beyond Planet Earth. © AMNH/M. Garlick

The Museum’s upcoming exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration features some spectacular technologies and missions—from a space elevator to the terraforming of Mars—that have been the staple of science fiction for the last 50 years, inspiring generations of students. Today, what was once limited to the realm of science fiction is being discussed by leading researchers and engineers as not-too-distant possibilities.

And so, for the first time ever, the Museum is headed to New York Comic Con (October 13 through October 16), this weekend’s highly anticipated convention. Our booth will feature a preview of Beyond Planet Earth and a mini-planetarium where visitors can enjoy a flight through the universe narrated by Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, with visualizations based on the Digital Universe Atlas, an authentic map of the observable cosmos maintained at the Museum.

On Saturday, October 15, Beyond Planet Earth curator Michael Shara will host a panel and screening at Comic Con to discuss what the movies have gotten right—and wrong—about space travel and technology.

See you at Comic Con!

Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration opens Saturday, November 19.  Click here to buy tickets, find out about the Beyond Planet Earth video contest, preview the Beyond Planet Earth Augmented Reality App, and more.

Manhattanhenge Returns July 12

Tuesday, July 05 10:40 am

The celestial phenomenon Manhattanhenge returns next week to gives denizens a dazzling view of the setting Sun perfectly aligned with the city’s grid.

Join Jackie Faherty, a research scientist in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics, for a special preview in the Hayden Planetarium on Tuesday, July 12. The program will include a visual explanation of Manhattenhenge using the state-of-the-art Zeiss Mark IX star projector and the Museum’s Digital Universe atlas, a four-dimensional atlas of the cosmos.

Before sunset on July 12 and 13, position yourself looking west  on such clear cross streets as 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th, among others, to watch for striking photographic opportunities as the Sun drops to the horizon across the Hudson River.

Share your photographs with the Museum by uploading them to Flickr and tagging them “Manhattanhenge” for a chance to win two tickets to an Astronomy Live program in the Hayden Planetarium. Photos must be posted by 11:59 pm on Thursday, July 14, to be considered. The Museum’s panel of judges, led by Director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson, will select one winner.

Manhattanhenge takes its name from the pre-historic circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge, in the Salisbury Plain of England. For Stonehenge, the special day is the summer solstice, when the Sun rises in perfect alignment with several of the stones, signaling the change of season.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Wednesday, June 23 11:36 am

Denton Ebel. © Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

Here’s your chance to catch a glimpse of the Museum’s out-of-public-view fifth floor — and more!

A few weeks ago, a reporter and a photographer from Wired.com came to the American Museumof Natural History for a whirlwind tour. But this was not your typical visit to check out the blue whale, Great Canoe, and T. rex. Instead, it was a rare peek behind the scenes, at the scientific offices and other facilities that visitors don’t typically see. Highlights included stops at paleontologist Neil Landman’s office and at the Museum’s imaging facility, where Landman’s assistant zoomed in on the surface of an ammonite to check fossil preservation; a visit to the fossil prep lab, where preparators painstakingly scrape each fossil from rock; a chat with meteoriticist Denton Ebel; and a look at the bank of computers that power the Museum’s Space Shows and the Digital Universe Atlas.

After a visit to Curator Mark Norell’s office (where he described how to make sushi in the Gobi) and the Exhibition Department’s studio (where artists were putting the finishing touches on penguin models that are now part of the Museum’s Race to the End of the Earth exhibition), the Wired team also explored the basement. Just past the carpentry shop, they toured the Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection, a world-class facility for storing frozen tissue specimens, with Collections Manager Julie Feinstein. And next door to the blue whale—but out of public view—they discovered the Big Bone room, which houses all of the fossils that are, well, big.

For more, check out the full gallery, “Not For Public Display: Backstage at the American Museum of Natural History,” on Wired.com.

The Known Universe Passes 5 Million YouTube Views

Tuesday, May 11 3:16 pm

Five million and counting: “The Known Universe,“ a six-minute journey from Earth to the edge of observable space and back, has surpassed five million views on YouTube since the American Museum of Natural History released the video in December 2009.

Produced for an exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art and later posted on the AMNH YouTube channel, this short flight through the Museum’s Digital Universe Atlas – the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe — was received with great enthusiasm. It has been watched by viewers from around the world, nearly 10,000 of whom have recorded their reactions in comments that range in tone from playful to philosophical.

The Known Universe from AMNH on Vimeo.

The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered For All to See

Tuesday, December 15 10:19 am

After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

Download ‘Known Universe’

The magic of this film, though, happens as the inky black expands. Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.

The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe. The Digital Universe started nearly a decade ago. It is continually updated and is the primary resource for production of the Museum’s Space Shows such as the current Journey to the Stars, and is used in live, real-time renderings for Virtual Tours of the Universe, a public program held on the first Tuesday of every month. Last year, some 30,000 people downloaded the Digital Universe to their personal computers, and the Digital Universe will soon be updated with a more accurate and user-friendly software interface. Digital Universe is licensed to many other planetariums and theaters world-wide.

“I liken the Digital Universe to the invention of the globe,” says Curator Ben R. Oppenheimer, an astrophysicist at the Museum. “When Mercator invented the globe, everyone wanted one. He had back orders for years. It gave everyone a new perspective on where they live in relation to others, and we hope that the Digital Universe does the same on a grander, cosmic scale.”

The new film was produced by Michael Hoffman, and directed by Carter Emmart. Brian Abbott manages and Ben R. Oppenheimer curates the Digital Universe Atlas. The exhibition at the Rubin, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, opened on December 11 and continues through May 10.

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