These interactive shows offer a fun encounter with science that the whole family will enjoy. Help Dr. Nebula’s apprentice, Scooter, figure out the mysteries of natural phenomena. (Recommended for families with children ages 4 and up)
Planetary Vacation
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Saturday, September 27
- 2:00-3:00 p.m.
- Kaufmann Theater, first floor
- $8 children, $10 adults
- Code: RC092708
Dr. Nebula is taking a planetary vacation! Join Scooter as she tracks his voyage and explores the planets and moons of our solar system.
At Saturn: Tripping the Light Fantastic
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Monday, September 15
- 7:30 p.m.
- Hayden Planetarium Space Theater
- $15 ($13.50 Members, students, senior citizens) Advance registration encouraged
- Code: HL091508
A glistening spaceship, with seven years and billions of miles behind it, glides into orbit around a ringed, softly-hued planet. The legendary Cassini spacecraft and its Huygens probe have arrived at Saturn in the outer reaches of our solar system. Carolyn Porco, Director of Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS), will discuss the scientific significance of this historic exploration. See some of the spectacular images sent from the spacecraft in the Museum’s photography exhibition Saturn: Images from the Cassini-Huygens Mission.
On the last Tuesday of each month, enjoy a live presentation under the brilliant stars of the Zeiss Mark IX Star Projector. This tour of the heavens offers a view of the constantly changing night sky. Learn about the current positions of the Moon, planets, and stars, as well as visual spectacles such as meteor showers, eclipses, and conjunctions.
Planets in the Autumn Sky
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Tuesday, September 30
- 6:30 p.m.
- Hayden Planetarium Space Theater
- $15 ($13.50 Members, students, senior citizens) Advance registration encouraged
- Code: HM093008
As we make the transition to the cool, crisp weather of autumn, we can sight all five bright, naked-eye planets during the course of the night. In the evening, there's Jupiter and brilliant Venus, returning to view after a summer sabbatical. In the morning sky, the "elusive planet" Mercury becomes less elusive, while Saturn with its nearly edge-on ring system emerges into view.
There will be no program in November due to holiday schedules. These programs are supported, in part, by Val and Min-Myn Schaffner.
Animal Drawing
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- Eight Thursdays, September 25 - November 20
- AMNH
- $160 (Materials not included) Enrollment is limited to 25
- Code: EW092508
The celebrated dioramas, dinosaur skeletons, and other
distinctive features of the Museum serve as the setting for
an intensive after-hours drawing course with Stephen C.
Quinn, Department of Exhibition, and author of Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History. Learn about the gifted artists who created the world-class dioramas as you sketch subjects in their “natural” environments.
Sea Monsters
Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure, a stunning large-format film, opened on Saturday, May 24, 2008. Narrated by Tony Award-winning actor Liev Schreiber, the 40-minute film explores the largely unknown world of the "other" dinosaurs, reptiles that lived beneath the water 80 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, when places such as Kansas were at the bottom of a great inland sea that divided North America in two. During this period of warmer climate much of the world was submerged and cold-blooded seagoing reptiles flourished. When these giant creatures died and the seas receded, their fossils were found on what is now dry land.
Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure follows an animated family of Dolichorhynchops (a sea creature approximately the size of a dolphin with a long snout), informally known as "Dollies," as they travel these ancient waters. During their journey the Dollies encounter many other astonishing sea creatures including Platecarpus, a lizard-like reptile that swallows its prey whole like snakes; Styxosaurus, with a 20-foot-long neck and paddle-like fins as large as an adult human; and the gigantic, top-of-the-food-chain Tylosaurus.
The film also visits paleontological digs around the world and shows how and what scientists know about these creatures. For example, shark teeth found throughout the central United States prove that sharks thrived during the Age of the Dinosaurs, while the shapes of their jaws and teeth provide clues about their diets. Occasionally paleontologists are lucky enough to discover bones of one species inside the remains of the other, such as a fossilized Xiphactinus, a 17-foot-long predatory fish found with an entire 6-foot fish inside, swallowed whole.
Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure was produced by National Geographic Cinema Ventures.
Screenings of Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure are held daily in the LeFrak Theater every hour on the half hour from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Space Shows in the Hayden Planetarium
An illustration of the solar wind interacting with Earth's magnetic field.
© American Museum of Natural History/NASA
Cosmic Collisions
- 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. every half hour, except Wednesdays
- Wednesday shows begin at 11:00 a.m.
- Visit the Cosmic Collisions Web site for more information and to view the trailer.
A spectacular immersive theater experience, Cosmic Collisions launches visitors on a thrilling trip through space and time—well beyond the calm face of the night sky—to explore cosmic collisions, hypersonic impacts that drive the dynamic and continuing evolution of the universe. Groundbreaking scientific simulations and visualizations based on cutting-edge research developed by Museum astrophysicists, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other international colleagues—many seen for the first time—depict the dramatic and explosive encounters that shaped our solar system, changed the course of life on Earth, and continue to transform our galaxy. The new show explores the full range of space collisions, past, present, and future.
Cosmic Collisions is narrated by award-winning actor, director, and producer Robert Redford.
The Zeiss mark IX star projector inside the Hayden Planetarium.
© D. Finnin/AMNH
- Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m.
- Hayden Planetarium Space Theater
On this trip to the Moon in the immersive Hayden Planetarium, you'll feel the ground shake as your rocket launches, see a sunrise in space, and orbit and land on the Moon. Guided by a live presenter, you'll admire the view from where humans last walked on the Moon, and see what awaits us on future missions.
For more information click here.
How Do You See Your Music?
Heaven: Temple of Eyes "Honestly"
This soaring image was created by artist Alex Grey to accompany Zwan's "Honestly" and adapted from his painting Collective Vision.
© D. Finnin/AMNH
SonicVision
- SonicVision is Presented every Friday and Saturday evening, at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.
The American Museum of Natural History, in collaboration with MTV2, presents SonicVision, a groundbreaking digitally animated alternative music show.
SonicVision takes audiences in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater on a mind-warping musical roller-coaster ride through fantastical dreamspace. With a mix by Moby and featuring tracks from Radiohead, U2, David Bowie, Coldplay, Queens of the Stone Age, Prodigy, The Flaming Lips, Fischerspooner, Spiritualized, Audioslave, Stereolab, Boards of Canada, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Goldfrapp, Zwan, White Zombie, and Moby, the music ignites this one-of-a-kind computer-generated musical and visual experience, which uses next-generation digital technology to illuminate the Planetarium's dome with a dazzling morphing of colorful visions. SonicVision is presented every Friday and Saturday evening at 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., in the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space.
