Encounters in the Milky Way

Spiral-shaped rendering of the Milky Way as seen from space. A visualization of the Milky Way’s collision with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, which has been ongoing for several billion years, based on a simulation from the University of Surrey.
Jon Parker /© AMNH
The Museum's newest Hayden Planetarium Space Show, Encounters in the Milky Way, brings audiences on a time-traveling journey to witness some of the chance encounters that have shaped the destiny of the cosmos. 

Narrated by Pedro Pascal, Encounters in the Milky Way is the first American Museum of Natural History Space Show to present the story of cosmic motion and how that impacts our solar system. Reaching billions of years into the past and peering millions of years into the future, this time-traveling journey is made possible by data from one of the most transformative astronomical projects of the past century: the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which has been dubbed the “billion-star survey” for mapping the precise positions, distances, and motions of nearly 2 billion stars in the Milky Way since 2013.

In addition to tracing the paths of stars, comets, interstellar debris, and visually stunning gas and dust clouds, Encounters in the Milky Way shows, for the first time, the dramatic merger of our galaxy with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.

Encounters also features the James Webb Space Telescope, operating since 2022 a million miles away from Earth and the most powerful space telescope yet.

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Encounters in the Milky Way was created by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (amnh.org).

Encounters in the Milky Way was developed with the major support and partnership of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).