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Tour of the Universe fulldome show

Journey through the observable Universe and back in time in this video by the California Academy of Sciences. Take in the immense scale of the Universe and reflect on Earth’s place in it. You’ll also see how the light from distant objects represents objects and events from the past, allowing us to peer into the ancient Universe.

Please note: The 'Tour of the Universe' video is released under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license. Permission is not granted to 'remix' or modify this content for distribution.

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Planetarium Show

Tour of the universe.

Tour of the Universe Daily: 4:30 pm Capacity limited, reservations required

Explore the immense scale of the known Universe in this live presentation that leaves Earth far behind, thanks to the incredible digital capabilities of the Morrison Planetarium. Traveling even faster than light, audiences are taken out of our solar system and beyond clusters of galaxies to the edge of the cosmos, then safely back home to Earth…without leaving their seats!

Please note: Planetarium shows may not be appropriate for children under 7, and we regret that we cannot admit any child under 4.

Planetarium shows are included with admission, but capacity is limited for the safety of our guests and staff. Reservations are required and are available on a first-come, first-served basis: Please scan the QR code posted in the lobby as soon as you arrive for the greatest selection of available showtimes. If available, additional tickets will be released later in the day an hour before each showtime. We regret that we can’t guarantee the availability of reservations during periods of high demand, especially weekends and holidays. For more information, please view our planetarium FAQ .

The interior of Morrison Planetarium—one of the world's largest all-digital domes.

Experience the cosmos from the Academy's all-digital, 75-foot planetarium dome. Reservations required.

Buy ahead and save! About the planetarium Daily calendar Interactive map

The history of the Tour of the Universe spaceship simulator at the CN Tower

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Between 1986 and 1992, the CN Tower was home to an innovative spaceship simulator which took guests from Toronto to Jupiter and back for $7. Did you ever fly the Tour of the Universe? 

Tour of the Universe was a simulation of space travel set in Spaceport Toronto in the distant year 2019, complete with customs clearance, space inoculations, marauding aliens, boarding passes, security checks and long, unexplained delays.

It was the stuff of birthday party legend. Kid's rock band  Kideo even shot a music video there.

How was Tour of the Universe created?

Citytv and MuchMusic creator Moses Znaimer  acquired the rights for the title and subject matter after reading an artbook called Tour of the Universe which imagined what a futuristic spaceport might one day look like.

At the time Znaimer was pioneering the concept of “The Living Movie" an experience that took viewers out of passive entertainment directly and into active participation.

Znaimer assembled a diverse group to realize this futuristic vision including Canadian Pacific Airlines, The CN Tower, Sim-Ex , NASA artist Robert McCall , and Showscan (A UK company owned by special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull ) to produce the world’s first F/X flight simulator ride.

Roots Canada created the sharp black and orange suits worn by CP Air Interplanetary employees.

Back to the future: the CN Tower's basement was not only a Spaceport but a time-machine to 2019 too.

What was Tour of the Universe?

The premise of Tour of the Universe is that you would be taken on an elevator ride down 1,816 feet beneath the earth's surface and a time-jump forward into 2019. 

Passengers arrived at "Spaceport Toronto" and purchased their tickets from CP Air Interplanetary then passed through customs, security and medical — where they were inoculated against space diseases such as "Ganymeade Rash".

Later iterations of the experience included actors in alien or galactic police costumes engaging in scripted drama occurring at various parts of the Space Port.

Massive video screens within the complex also showed promos for space-aged news “Galaxy Pulse” and “MuchMoreMusic”, the universe’s hottest music station.

The voice of the master computer, or “Central Scrutinizer” as it was known at Space Port Toronto was provided by Marilyn Lightstone .

A large mural titled “Grand Tour” behind the Ticketing/Check-in plinths was created by Robert McCall, the artist chosen by NASA to document the U.S. Space program, another signifier of legitimacy to the experience.

The gift shop sold moon rock and astronaut ice-cream, as well as a Tour of the Universe teddy bear which has since become a sought after collector’s item on eBay.

CP Air Interplantary: Working for the new generation in space 

What was the ride like?

The shuttlecraft simulator was "blasted into outer space" from inside the shaft of the tower itself — engines throbbing, floor-shaking, lights flashing, speed increasing, faster and faster until it burst out and soared toward the outer moons of Jupiter in a dreamland of zero-gravity.

Inevitably, the craft would hit an asteroid and be forced to return to earth. The "captain" of the Jupiter-bound flight was actually just a video loop of an actor who would appear to address the passengers. He was fittingly designated "Captain Moses."

The ride was designed by Toronto’s Sim-Ex and utilized two Boeing 747 simulators.

It seated 40 passengers who experienced an 11-minute long film presented in 70mm and produced by legendary science fiction special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull ( 2001: A Space Odyssey , Blade Runner ,  Silent Running ) whose UK company Showscan Film also built the interior of the spacecraft cabin.

Trumbull developed visuals that were called “Jupiter ViewTrip”.

Lasers inoculated travellers from space ailments such as Ganymeade Rash.

The legacy of Tour of the Universe

Simulator-Based Attractions are now commonplace at the world’s most popular theme parks, and Sim-Ex went on to become the leader in the 3D and 4D cinematic F/X attraction experience but Tour of the Universe was their first.

In fact, through a franchise arrangement, the idea for Tour of the Universe was later recreated as the major attraction at a theme park in Bentencho, a district of Osaka, Japan.

Construction on Tour of the Universe began in 1984 and the ride operated from 1986 to 1992. It cost $10-million to build, while visitors paid $7 for adults and $4 for children. It is estimated that this “living movie” was experienced by almost two million paying visitors in total.

Tour of the Universe was the world’s first large-scale simulator-based attraction, a functional, operational tour de force that revolutionized civil engineering and set the stage for future iterations of the theme park simulator experience around the world.

If you have been wowed by the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance simulator at Walt Disney World, now you know where it all started.

SimEx-Iwerks Entertainment

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1.6: A Tour of the Universe

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We can now take a brief introductory tour of the universe as astronomers understand it today to get acquainted with the types of objects and distances you will encounter throughout the text. We begin at home with Earth, a nearly spherical planet about 13,000 kilometers in diameter (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). A space traveler entering our planetary system would easily distinguish Earth from the other planets in our solar system by the large amount of liquid water that covers some two thirds of its crust. If the traveler had equipment to receive radio or television signals, or came close enough to see the lights of our cities at night, she would soon find signs that this watery planet has sentient life.

Our nearest astronomical neighbor is Earth’s satellite, commonly called the Moon . Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\) shows Earth and the Moon drawn to scale on the same diagram. Notice how small we have to make these bodies to fit them on the page with the right scale. The Moon’s distance from Earth is about 30 times Earth’s diameter, or approximately 384,000 kilometers, and it takes about a month for the Moon to revolve around Earth. The Moon’s diameter is 3476 kilometers, about one fourth the size of Earth.

Light (or radio waves) takes 1.3 seconds to travel between Earth and the Moon. If you’ve seen videos of the Apollo flights to the Moon, you may recall that there was a delay of about 3 seconds between the time Mission Control asked a question and the time the astronauts responded. This was not because the astronomers were thinking slowly, but rather because it took the radio waves almost 3 seconds to make the round trip.

Earth revolves around our star, the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers away—approximately 400 times as far away from us as the Moon. We call the average Earth–Sun distance an astronomical unit (AU) because, in the early days of astronomy, it was the most important measuring standard. Light takes slightly more than 8 minutes to travel 1 astronomical unit, which means the latest news we receive from the Sun is always 8 minutes old. The diameter of the Sun is about 1.5 million kilometers; Earth could fit comfortably inside one of the minor eruptions that occurs on the surface of our star. If the Sun were reduced to the size of a basketball, Earth would be a small apple seed about 30 meters from the ball.

It takes Earth 1 year (\(3 × 10^7\, seconds\)) to go around the Sun at our distance; to make it around, we must travel at approximately 110,000 kilometers per hour. (If you, like many students, still prefer miles to kilometers, you might find the following trick helpful. To convert kilometers to miles, just multiply kilometers by 0.6. Thus, 110,000 kilometers per hour becomes 66,000 miles per hour.) Because gravity holds us firmly to Earth and there is no resistance to Earth’s motion in the vacuum of space, we participate in this extremely fast-moving trip without being aware of it day to day.

Earth is only one of eight planets that revolve around the Sun. These planets, along with their moons and swarms of smaller bodies such as dwarf planets, make up the solar system (Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\)). A planet is defined as a body of significant size that orbits a star and does not produce its own light. (If a large body consistently produces its own light, it is then called a star .) Later in the book this definition will be modified a bit, but it is perfectly fine for now as you begin your voyage.

The Sun is our local star, and all the other stars are also enormous balls of glowing gas that generate vast amounts of energy by nuclear reactions deep within. We will discuss the processes that cause stars to shine in more detail later in the book. The other stars look faint only because they are so very far away. If we continue our basketball analogy, Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun, which is 4.3 light-years away, would be almost 7000 kilometers from the basketball.

When you look up at a star-filled sky on a clear night, all the stars visible to the unaided eye are part of a single collection of stars we call the Milky Way Galaxy , or simply the Galaxy . (When referring to the Milky Way, we capitalize Galaxy ; when talking about other galaxies of stars, we use lowercase galaxy .) The Sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars that make up the Galaxy; its extent, as we will see, staggers the human imagination. Within a sphere 10 light-years in radius centered on the Sun, we find roughly ten stars. Within a sphere 100 light-years in radius, there are roughly 10,000 (104) stars—far too many to count or name—but we have still traversed only a tiny part of the Milky Way Galaxy. Within a 1000-light-year sphere, we find some ten million (107) stars; within a sphere of 100,000 light-years, we finally encompass the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

Our Galaxy looks like a giant disk with a small ball in the middle. If we could move outside our Galaxy and look down on the disk of the Milky Way from above, it would probably resemble the galaxy in Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\), with its spiral structure outlined by the blue light of hot adolescent stars.

The Sun is somewhat less than 30,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy, in a location with nothing much to distinguish it. From our position inside the Milky Way Galaxy, we cannot see through to its far rim (at least not with ordinary light) because the space between the stars is not completely empty. It contains a sparse distribution of gas (mostly the simplest element, hydrogen) intermixed with tiny solid particles that we call interstellar dust . This gas and dust collect into enormous clouds in many places in the Galaxy, becoming the raw material for future generations of stars. Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\) shows an image of the disk of the Galaxy as seen from our vantage point.

Typically, the interstellar material is so extremely sparse that the space between stars is a much better vacuum than anything we can produce in terrestrial laboratories. Yet, the dust in space, building up over thousands of light-years, can block the light of more distant stars. Like the distant buildings that disappear from our view on a smoggy day in Los Angeles, the more distant regions of the Milky Way cannot be seen behind the layers of interstellar smog. Luckily, astronomers have found that stars and raw material shine with various forms of light, some of which do penetrate the smog, and so we have been able to develop a pretty good map of the Galaxy.

Recent observations, however, have also revealed a rather surprising and disturbing fact. There appears to be more—much more—to the Galaxy than meets the eye (or the telescope). From various investigations, we have evidence that much of our Galaxy is made of material we cannot currently observe directly with our instruments. We therefore call this component of the Galaxy dark matter . We know the dark matter is there by the pull its gravity exerts on the stars and raw material we can observe, but what this dark matter is made of and how much of it exists remain a mystery. Furthermore, this dark matter is not confined to our Galaxy; it appears to be an important part of other star groupings as well.

By the way, not all stars live by themselves, as the Sun does. Many are born in double or triple systems with two, three, or more stars revolving about each other. Because the stars influence each other in such close systems, multiple stars allow us to measure characteristics that we cannot discern from observing single stars. In a number of places, enough stars have formed together that we recognized them as star clusters (Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\)). Some of the largest of the star clusters that astronomers have cataloged contain hundreds of thousands of stars and take up volumes of space hundreds of light-years across.

You may hear stars referred to as “eternal,” but in fact no star can last forever. Since the “business” of stars is making energy, and energy production requires some sort of fuel to be used up, eventually all stars run out of fuel. This news should not cause you to panic, though, because our Sun still has at least 5 or 6 billion years to go. Ultimately, the Sun and all stars will die, and it is in their death throes that some of the most intriguing and important processes of the universe are revealed. For example, we now know that many of the atoms in our bodies were once inside stars. These stars exploded at the ends of their lives, recycling their material back into the reservoir of the Galaxy. In this sense, all of us are literally made of recycled “star dust.”

1.6 A Tour of the Universe

We can now take a brief introductory tour of the universe as astronomers understand it today to get acquainted with the types of objects and distances you will encounter throughout the text. We begin at home with Earth, a nearly spherical planet about 13,000 kilometers in diameter ( Figure 1.6 ). A space traveler entering our planetary system would easily distinguish Earth from the other planets in our solar system by the large amount of liquid water that covers some two thirds of its crust. If the traveler had equipment to receive radio or television signals, or came close enough to see the lights of our cities at night, she would soon find signs that this watery planet has sentient life.

Our nearest astronomical neighbor is Earth’s satellite, commonly called the Moon . Figure 1.7 shows Earth and the Moon drawn to scale on the same diagram. Notice how small we have to make these bodies to fit them on the page with the right scale. The Moon’s distance from Earth is about 30 times Earth’s diameter, or approximately 384,000 kilometers, and it takes about a month for the Moon to revolve around Earth. The Moon’s diameter is 3476 kilometers, about one fourth the size of Earth.

Light (or radio waves) takes 1.3 seconds to travel between Earth and the Moon. If you’ve seen videos of the Apollo flights to the Moon, you may recall that there was a delay of about 3 seconds between the time Mission Control asked a question and the time the astronauts responded. This was not because the astronauts were thinking slowly, but rather because it took the radio waves almost 3 seconds to make the round trip.

Earth revolves around our star, the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers away—approximately 400 times as far away from us as the Moon. We call the average Earth–Sun distance an astronomical unit (AU) because, in the early days of astronomy, it was the most important measuring standard. Light takes slightly more than 8 minutes to travel 1 astronomical unit, which means the latest news we receive from the Sun is always 8 minutes old. The diameter of the Sun is about 1.5 million kilometers; Earth could fit comfortably inside one of the minor eruptions that occurs on the surface of our star. If the Sun were reduced to the size of a basketball, Earth would be a small apple seed about 30 meters from the ball.

It takes Earth 1 year ( 3 × 10 7 3 × 10 7 seconds) to go around the Sun at our distance; to make it around, we must travel at approximately 110,000 kilometers per hour. (If you, like many students, still prefer miles to kilometers, you might find the following trick helpful. To convert kilometers to miles, just multiply kilometers by 0.6. Thus, 110,000 kilometers per hour becomes 66,000 miles per hour.) Because gravity holds us firmly to Earth and there is no resistance to Earth’s motion in the vacuum of space, we participate in this extremely fast-moving trip without being aware of it day to day.

Earth is only one of eight planets that revolve around the Sun. These planets, along with their moons and swarms of smaller bodies such as dwarf planets, make up the solar system ( Figure 1.8 ). A planet is defined as a body of significant size that orbits a star and does not produce its own light. (If a large body consistently produces its own light, it is then called a star .) Later in the book this definition will be modified a bit, but it is perfectly fine for now as you begin your voyage.

We are able to see the nearby planets in our skies only because they reflect the light of our local star, the Sun. If the planets were much farther away, the tiny amount of light they reflect would usually not be visible to us. The planets we have so far discovered orbiting other stars were found from the pull their gravity exerts on their parent stars, or from the light they block from their stars when they pass in front of them. We can’t see most of these planets directly, although a few are now being imaged directly.

The Sun is our local star, and all the other stars are also enormous balls of glowing gas that generate vast amounts of energy by nuclear reactions deep within. We will discuss the processes that cause stars to shine in more detail later in the book. The other stars look faint only because they are so very far away. If we continue our basketball analogy, Proxima Centauri , the nearest star beyond the Sun, which is 4.25 light-years away, would be almost 7000 kilometers from the basketball.

When you look up at a star-filled sky on a clear night, all the stars visible to the unaided eye are part of a single collection of stars we call the Milky Way Galaxy , or simply the Galaxy . (When referring to the Milky Way, we capitalize Galaxy ; when talking about other galaxies of stars, we use lowercase galaxy .) The Sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars that make up the Galaxy; its extent, as we will see, staggers the human imagination. Within a sphere 10 light-years in radius centered on the Sun, we find roughly ten stars. Within a sphere 100 light-years in radius, there are roughly 10,000 ( 10 4 ) ( 10 4 ) stars—far too many to count or name—but we have still traversed only a tiny part of the Milky Way Galaxy . Within a 1000-light-year sphere, we find some ten million ( 10 7 ) ( 10 7 ) stars; within a sphere of 100,000 light-years, we finally encompass the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

Our Galaxy looks like a giant disk with a small ball in the middle. If we could move outside our Galaxy and look down on the disk of the Milky Way from above, it would probably resemble the galaxy in Figure 1.9 , with its spiral structure outlined by the blue light of hot adolescent stars.

The Sun is somewhat less than 30,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy, in a location with nothing much to distinguish it. From our position inside the Milky Way Galaxy, we cannot see through to its far rim (at least not with ordinary light) because the space between the stars is not completely empty. It contains a sparse distribution of gas (mostly the simplest element, hydrogen) intermixed with tiny solid particles that we call interstellar dust . This gas and dust collect into enormous clouds in many places in the Galaxy, becoming the raw material for future generations of stars. Figure 1.10 shows an image of the disk of the Galaxy as seen from our vantage point.

Typically, the interstellar material is so extremely sparse that the space between stars is a much better vacuum than anything we can produce in terrestrial laboratories. Yet, the dust in space, building up over thousands of light-years, can block the light of more distant stars. Like the distant buildings that disappear from our view on a smoggy day in Los Angeles, the more distant regions of the Milky Way cannot be seen behind the layers of interstellar smog. Luckily, astronomers have found that stars and raw material shine with various forms of light, some of which do penetrate the smog, and so we have been able to develop a pretty good map of the Galaxy.

Recent observations, however, have also revealed a rather surprising and disturbing fact. There appears to be more—much more—to the Galaxy than meets the eye (or the telescope). From various investigations, we have evidence that much of our Galaxy is made of material we cannot currently observe directly with our instruments. We therefore call this component of the Galaxy dark matter . We know the dark matter is there by the pull its gravity exerts on the stars and raw material we can observe, but what this dark matter is made of and how much of it exists remain a mystery. Furthermore, this dark matter is not confined to our Galaxy; it appears to be an important part of other star groupings as well.

By the way, not all stars live by themselves, as the Sun does. Many are born in double or triple systems with two, three, or more stars revolving about each other. Because the stars influence each other in such close systems, multiple stars allow us to measure characteristics that we cannot discern from observing single stars. In a number of places, enough stars have formed together that we recognized them as star clusters ( Figure 1.11 ). Some of the largest of the star clusters that astronomers have cataloged contain hundreds of thousands of stars and take up volumes of space hundreds of light-years across.

You may hear stars referred to as “eternal,” but in fact no star can last forever. Since the “business” of stars is making energy, and energy production requires some sort of fuel to be used up, eventually all stars run out of fuel. This news should not cause you to panic, though, because our Sun still has at least 5 or 6 billion years to go. Ultimately, the Sun and all stars will die, and it is in their death throes that some of the most intriguing and important processes of the universe are revealed. For example, we now know that many of the atoms in our bodies were once inside stars. These stars exploded at the ends of their lives, recycling their material back into the reservoir of the Galaxy. In this sense, all of us are literally made of recycled “star dust.”

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• Authors: Andrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, Sidney Wolff
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Astronomy 2e
• Publication date: Mar 9, 2022
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/1-6-a-tour-of-the-universe

© Jan 23, 2024 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

A guided tour of the universe.

A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum gives visitors a dazzling view of our evolving universe

Joseph Stromberg

A tour of the  Natural History Museum might lead you from an exhibition on dinosaurs to one about  ocean creatures . You might read about how  hominids evolved millions of years ago, how our planet’s continents have moved, or how early creatures evolved when the atmosphere was practically devoid of oxygen. The time scale of natural history, you realize, is almost unimaginably large.

But if you enter the museum’s new exhibition, “ The Evolving Universe “—a show featuring photography from some of the most powerful telescopes ever created—you’ll find yourself even more astounded. Set against the backdrop of the known universe, the history of our dear planet seems nearly irrelevant. Hundreds of billions of stars like our sun are born out of supernovae several light years wide (each light year is longer than five trillion miles) and are destined to die, once again exploding into supernovas ,  billions of years later. Thousands of galaxies, some containing  trillions of stars like our sun, are continuously being born and evolving.

Although these concepts can be difficult to comprehend and even harder to visualize, the stunning photos that make up the exhibition show the visitor just how awe-inspiring these astronomical events can be. They put the latest CGI graphics from 3-D blockbuster films to shame. “Part of our mission is sharing science with the public, and so we felt that doing this exhibit and showing these images is a great way to do that,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the  Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory , which partnered with the museum in creating the exhibition. The large-scale photographs in the show were produced by a number of telescopes, both Earth and space-based, including the  Hubble Space Telescope .

“We’ve all seen the amazing pictures from NASA’s probes in our own solar system,” says McDowell. “I’m excited about bringing to the public the remarkable images of the broader universe that we astronomers have been exploring with our telescopes. I hope that with this exhibition visitors will take away an appreciation for our larger cosmic neighborhood.”

The show—and  accompanying website —use these images to tell the story of our universe, from start to present.  The Big Bang ,  the creation of galaxies ,  the birth of the Milky Way  and  the formation of our own solar system  are represented in rich images so full of detail that they need to be observed for minutes at a time, like pieces of art hung on the wall.

What might be most remarkable is that the actual images created by the telescopes are themselves ancient history. Because light takes so long to travel from the far-flung reaches of space, when we photograph distant galaxies, the light that hits the camera’s lens to produce the image left its home galaxy billions of years ago. These pictures show some of the celestial objects as they were before humans even existed. And so we have a font-row seat to watch  the earliest stages of the universe’s creation , if we look deep enough into space, more than 13 billion years later.

When wandering the exhibition, one might be overwhelmed by the torrent of information presented on scales that are downright otherworldly. How does our planet, so tiny and new, fit into all of this?

The best metaphor to understand earth’s place in the universe might be that of astrophysicist, author and recent  Around the Mall blog subject  Carl Sagan. In his book  Pale Blue Dot , he describes a far-off view of the Earth from the outer reaches of the solar system:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there –  on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam .

In the scheme of the known universe—of supernovae and galaxies and nebulas and black holes—our whole planet starts to look like a speck of dust, floating in the sunlight.

The Evolving Universe is on view at the Natural History Museum through July 7, 2013

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Joseph Stromberg | | READ MORE

Joseph Stromberg was previously a digital reporter for Smithsonian .

A Tour of the Universe

We can now take a brief introductory tour of the universe as astronomers understand it today to get acquainted with the types of objects and distances you will encounter throughout the text. We begin at home with Earth, a nearly spherical planet about 13,000 kilometers in diameter (Figure 1.6). A space traveler entering our planetary system would easily distinguish Earth from the other planets in our solar system by the large amount of liquid water that covers some two thirds of its crust.

Our nearest astronomical neighbor is Earth’s satellite, commonly called the Moon. Figure 1.7 shows Earth and the Moon drawn to scale on the same diagram. Notice how small we have to make these bodies to fit them on the page with the right scale. The Moon’s distance from Earth is about 30 times Earth’s diameter, or approximately 384,000 kilometers, and it takes about a month for the Moon to revolve around Earth. The Moon’s diameter is 3476 kilometers, about one fourth the size of Earth.

Light (or radio waves) takes 1.3 seconds to travel between Earth and the Moon. If you’ve seen videos of the Apollo flights to the Moon, you may recall that there was a delay of about 3 seconds between the time Mission Control asked a question and the time the astronauts responded. This was not because the astronauts were thinking slowly, but rather because it took the radio waves almost 3 seconds to make the round trip.

Earth revolves around our star, the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers away—approximately 400 times as far away from us as the Moon. We call the average Earth–Sun distance an astronomical unit (AU) because, in the early days of astronomy, it was the most important measuring standard. Light takes slightly more than 8 minutes to travel 1 astronomical unit, which means the latest news we receive from the Sun is always 8 minutes old. The diameter of the Sun is about 1.5 million kilometers; Earth could fit comfortably inside one of the minor eruptions that occurs on the surface of our star. If the Sun were reduced to the size of a basketball, Earth would be a small apple seed about 30 meters from the ball.

It takes Earth 1 year (3 × 107 seconds) to go around the Sun at our distance; to make it around, we must travel at approximately 110,000 kilometers per hour. (If you, like many students, still prefer miles to kilometers, you might find the following trick helpful. To convert kilometers to miles, just multiply kilometers by 0.6. Thus, 110,000 kilometers per hour becomes 66,000 miles per hour.) Because gravity holds us firmly to Earth and there is no resistance to Earth’s motion in the vacuum of space, we participate in this extremely fast-moving trip without being aware of it day to day.

Earth is only one of eight planets that revolve around the Sun. These planets, along with their moons and swarms of smaller bodies such as dwarf planets, make up the solar system (Figure 1.8). A planet is defined as a body of significant size that orbits a star and does not produce its own light. (If a large body consistently produces its own light, it is then called a star.) Later in the book this definition will be modified a bit, but it is perfectly fine for now as you begin your voyage.

We are able to see the nearby planets in our skies only because they reflect the light of our local star, the Sun. If the planets were much farther away, the tiny amount of light they reflect would usually not be visible to us. The planets we have so far discovered orbiting other stars were found from the pull their gravity exerts on their parent stars, or from the light they block from their stars when they pass in front of them. We can’t see most of these planets directly, although a few are now being imaged directly.

The Sun is our local star, and all the other stars are also enormous balls of glowing gas that generate vast amounts of energy by nuclear reactions deep within. We will discuss the processes that cause stars to shine in more detail later in the book. The other stars look faint only because they are so very far away. If we continue our basketball analogy, Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun, which is 4.3 light-years away, would be almost 7000 kilometers from the basketball.

When you look up at a star-filled sky on a clear night, all the stars visible to the unaided eye are part of a single collection of stars we call the Milky Way Galaxy, or simply the Galaxy. (When referring to the Milky Way, we capitalize Galaxy; when talking about other galaxies of stars, we use lowercase galaxy.) The Sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars that make up the Galaxy; its extent, as we will see, staggers the human imagination. Within a sphere 10 light-years in radius centered on the Sun, we find roughly ten stars. Within a sphere 100 light-years in radius, there are roughly 10,000 (104) stars—far too many to count or name—but we have still traversed only a tiny part of the Milky Way Galaxy. Within a 1000-light-year sphere, we find some ten million (107) stars; within a sphere of 100,000 light-years, we finally encompass the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

Our Galaxy looks like a giant disk with a small ball in the middle. If we could move outside our Galaxy and look down on the disk of the Milky Way from above, it would probably resemble the galaxy in Figure 1.9, with its spiral structure outlined by the blue light of hot adolescent stars.

Ferely Medina

Title of talk:.

Hormonal Contraception, risks and Side Effects- My Personal Testimony

Ferely Correa born in Venezuela, married and mother of 5, met her husband when they were studying engineering. They now share the same profession as chemical engineers. Previously, Ferely was working as a chemical analyst in Venezuela and Mexico in the oil and gas industry, then moved to Holland, and there, volunteered as a team coordinator of activities related to the expat areas in the Hague, at ACCESS magazine. Currently, she is blessed to be part of the NFP instructors in USA, teaching the Billings Ovulation Method. Teaching has taken her on a rewarding and beautiful journey learning more about her body, how it works and what could potentially damage it.

We Are the Mutants

Earth visitor’s passport: ‘tour of the universe’, 1980.

Exhibit / November 20, 2018

Object Name : Tour of the Universe Maker and Year : Pierrot Books ,  1980  Object Type : Book Image Source : SciFi Art , Ski-Ffy , author’s copy Description : ( Richard McKenna )

A collision of imperial phase-Young Artists—the London-based illustration agency whose imagery would dominate and define British science fiction and fantasy art throughout the 1970s and ’80s—and an attention to graphic design detail that bordered on the unhinged, Tour of the Universe  was a bold attempt to create an immersive world of science fiction art and prose that still looks as wildly ambitious today, nearly 40 years later, as it did when it was first published.

In a time where simulated realities grow more sophisticated by the day, it is difficult to imagine a world where digital technologies could not and did not supply them. Buoyed by a wave of interest in fantasy and science fiction , lavishly illustrated books that attempted to allow readers to inhabit invented realities began appearing with increasing frequency over the second half of the 1970s: these included Wil Huygen’s 1976  Gnomes , Stewart Cowley’s Terran Trade Authority and  Galactic Encounters series, David Day’s 1978   Tolkien Bestiary , and Wayne Barlow’s 1979 Guide to Extraterrestrials ; Tour of the Universe was perhaps the most ambitious of all of them.

Tour ‘s authors were versatile SF and fantasy writer Robert Holdstock, strangely ubiquitous at the time and best known for his 1984 fantasy novel Mythago Wood (video game fans might know him for The Dark Wheel , the novella he wrote to accompany the 1984 computer game Elite ), and science fiction editor and critic Malcolm Edwards. The two had previously provided the text for 1979’s Alien Landscapes , a coffee table book featuring Young Artists visions of invented worlds, including Arrakis and Pern.

For Tour of the Universe , the two created a potpourri cosmos of their own invention. Seemingly taking inspiration in part from the success of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy— or more specifically from Hipgnosis’ cover of the 1979 gatefold Hitchhiker’s LP— Tour was published in 1980 by Pierrot Books, a British “packaging-cum-publishing” company that specialized in glossily-illustrated, oversized SF books until it went bankrupt in 1981. Its best known publications were probably the two Harry Harrison/Jim Burns collaborations, Mechanismo  and Planet Story (both 1978) .

Tour of the Universe tells the story of a couple of inhabitants of a far-future London, Caroline Luranski and Leio Scott, whose entry in an essay-writing competition (which, along with the endless forms filled out by pen and hand-stamped documents, is one of the many un-futuristic anachronisms that dot the book) wins them free seats on the first package tour to the secretive and militaristic Magellan confederation, a thinly disguised (as in, not really disguised at all) Eastern Bloc. Each of the two writes a diary, and gradually, over the course of the book, a backstory is revealed.

Despite being set 500 years in the future, things haven’t changed much, and the plot itself is all fairly standard stuff that could quite easily be removed (or ignored entirely—see below) without any real consequences: it is the artifact itself that is the real point, the accumulated garishly-colored detail—beautifully rendered cutaways of vast spacecraft, guidebook descriptions, alien planet-scapes, lists of starship insignia and bills of sale—gradually unfolding into a wonderfully surreal and evocative vision of a universe that we will never roam or dominate. In hindsight, there’s also something slightly melancholy about the optimism of its vision: a world where the certainties of the book’s present day, right down to the reassuring division of the world into opposed but fundamentally decent blocs, are extended into a future that, despite its problems, remains basically knowable and human—and thus somewhat mundane.

Despite the book’s many inconsistencies, you’d have to be an atrociously miserable bastard not to be at least slightly swept away by the vast, joyous spread of Tour of the Universe. Several of the images it contains ( Les Edward ‘s Tombworld , for example, or Jim Burns’ Spaceport ,  or Richard Clifton-Dey’s Behemoth’s World , which was used the same year as the cover art for Blue Öyster Cult’s Cultosaurus Erectus LP), have deservedly come to be regarded as classics of science fiction illustration, though to be honest there isn’t really a dud in the whole thing. The design and layout are beautiful, despite some confusing editorial choices—like the decision to print the diary entries (already the weakest part of the concept) over tight blue lines so as to make them practically illegible—and the book responds viscerally to the then-impossible yearning to be totally visually immersed in the surreal realia and atmospheres of other worlds.

Other books in a similar vein followed Tour of the Universe. One of the more unique attempts at brand promotion,  Galactic Tours: Thomas Cook Out of This World Vacations (Proteus, 1981), with text by veteran SF author Bob Shaw and artwork by David Hardy,   purported to be a brochure for imaginary off-earth tours offered by real-life British travel agent Thomas Cook, and even in 1990, renowned SF artist Chris Foss would release his own immersive combination of illustration and narrative with his Diary of a Spaceperson , which brought together both Foss art modes: the industrial surrealism of his color work and the lusty black and white pen and ink line drawings of his illustrations for The Joy of Sex .

In a peculiar epilogue, the rights for Tour of the Universe were later licensed for a space flight simulator that was housed in the Toronto CN tower between 1985 and 1990 . Predating the better-known Star Tours ride at the Disney theme parks, it was created by Showscan—the company founded and owned by special effects guru Douglas Trumbull—and took 40 passengers at a time through a spaceport which featured customs and immigration before departing on a journey to Jupiter (see the storyboards for the launch sequence here ). The ride itself used two Boeing 747 simulators, seating 40 passengers each, to represent the spacecraft’s cabins. The Tour ride—an advert for which can be seen here —was the brainchild of Toronto TV mogul Moses Znaimer, who was allegedly the inspiration for the character of Max Renn in David Cronenberg’s 1983 film Videodrome . Znaimer’s CITY TV channel—which in the film became CIVIC TV—made a name for itself in the late ’70s with its Baby Blue Movies  series of softcore porn .

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‘Necronomicon’ Advertisement, 1980

One thought on “ earth visitor’s passport: ‘tour of the universe’, 1980 ”.

i had a copy of this book as a boy, haven’t thought about it in years! thanks for the memory jolt. the futures not what it used to be…keep up the good work.

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Science and the Universe: A Brief Tour

A tour of the universe.

We can now take a brief introductory tour of the universe as astronomers understand it today to get acquainted with the types of objects and distances you will encounter throughout the text. We begin at home with Earth, a nearly spherical planet about 13,000 kilometers in diameter (Figure 1). A space traveler entering our planetary system would easily distinguish Earth from the other planets in our solar system by the large amount of liquid water that covers some two thirds of its crust. If the traveler had equipment to receive radio or television signals, or came close enough to see the lights of our cities at night, she would soon find signs that this watery planet has sentient life.

Figure 1: Humanity’s Home Base. This image shows the Western hemisphere as viewed from space 35,400 kilometers (about 22,000 miles) above Earth. Data about the land surface from one satellite was combined with another satellite’s data about the clouds to create the image. (credit: modification of work by R. Stockli, A. Nelson, F. Hasler, NASA/ GSFC/ NOAA/ USGS)

Our nearest astronomical neighbor is Earth’s satellite, commonly called the Moon . Figure 2 shows Earth and the Moon drawn to scale on the same diagram. Notice how small we have to make these bodies to fit them on the page with the right scale. The Moon’s distance from Earth is about 30 times Earth’s diameter, or approximately 384,000 kilometers, and it takes about a month for the Moon to revolve around Earth. The Moon’s diameter is 3476 kilometers, about one fourth the size of Earth.

Figure 2: Earth and Moon, Drawn to Scale. This image shows Earth and the Moon shown to scale for both size and distance. (credit: modification of work by NASA)

Light (or radio waves) takes 1.3 seconds to travel between Earth and the Moon. If you’ve seen videos of the Apollo flights to the Moon, you may recall that there was a delay of about 3 seconds between the time Mission Control asked a question and the time the astronauts responded. This was not because the astronomers were thinking slowly, but rather because it took the radio waves almost 3 seconds to make the round trip.

Earth revolves around our star, the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers away—approximately 400 times as far away from us as the Moon. We call the average Earth–Sun distance an astronomical unit (AU) because, in the early days of astronomy, it was the most important measuring standard. Light takes slightly more than 8 minutes to travel 1 astronomical unit, which means the latest news we receive from the Sun is always 8 minutes old. The diameter of the Sun is about 1.5 million kilometers; Earth could fit comfortably inside one of the minor eruptions that occurs on the surface of our star. If the Sun were reduced to the size of a basketball, Earth would be a small apple seed about 30 meters from the ball.

It takes Earth 1 year (3 × 10 7 seconds) to go around the Sun at our distance; to make it around, we must travel at approximately 110,000 kilometers per hour. (If you, like many students, still prefer miles to kilometers, you might find the following trick helpful. To convert kilometers to miles, just multiply kilometers by 0.6. Thus, 110,000 kilometers per hour becomes 66,000 miles per hour.) Because gravity holds us firmly to Earth and there is no resistance to Earth’s motion in the vacuum of space, we participate in this extremely fast-moving trip without being aware of it day to day.

Earth is only one of eight planets that revolve around the Sun. These planets, along with their moons and swarms of smaller bodies such as dwarf planets, make up the solar system (Figure 3). A planet is defined as a body of significant size that orbits a star and does not produce its own light. (If a large body consistently produces its own light, it is then called a star .) Later in the book this definition will be modified a bit, but it is perfectly fine for now as you begin your voyage.

Figure 3: Our Solar Family. The Sun, the planets, and some dwarf planets are shown with their sizes drawn to scale. The orbits of the planets are much more widely separated than shown in this drawing. Notice the size of Earth compared to the giant planets. (credit: modification of work by NASA)

We are able to see the nearby planets in our skies only because they reflect the light of our local star, the Sun. If the planets were much farther away, the tiny amount of light they reflect would usually not be visible to us. The planets we have so far discovered orbiting other stars were found from the pull their gravity exerts on their parent stars, or from the light they block from their stars when they pass in front of them. We can’t see most of these planets directly, although a few are now being imaged directly.

The Sun is our local star, and all the other stars are also enormous balls of glowing gas that generate vast amounts of energy by nuclear reactions deep within. We will discuss the processes that cause stars to shine in more detail later in the book. The other stars look faint only because they are so very far away. If we continue our basketball analogy, Proxima Centauri , the nearest star beyond the Sun, which is 4.3 light-years away, would be almost 7000 kilometers from the basketball.

When you look up at a star-filled sky on a clear night, all the stars visible to the unaided eye are part of a single collection of stars we call the Milky Way Galaxy , or simply the Galaxy . (When referring to the Milky Way, we capitalize Galaxy ; when talking about other galaxies of stars, we use lowercase galaxy .) The Sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars that make up the Galaxy; its extent, as we will see, staggers the human imagination. Within a sphere 10 light-years in radius centered on the Sun, we find roughly ten stars. Within a sphere 100 light-years in radius, there are roughly 10,000 (10 4 ) stars—far too many to count or name—but we have still traversed only a tiny part of the Milky Way Galaxy . Within a 1000-light-year sphere, we find some ten million (10 7 ) stars; within a sphere of 100,000 light-years, we finally encompass the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

Figure 4. Spiral Galaxy. This galaxy of billions of stars, called by its catalog number NGC 1073, is thought to be similar to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Here we see the giant wheel-shaped system with a bar of stars across its middle. (credit: NASA, ESA)

Our Galaxy looks like a giant disk with a small ball in the middle. If we could move outside our Galaxy and look down on the disk of the Milky Way from above, it would probably resemble the galaxy in Figure 4, with its spiral structure outlined by the blue light of hot adolescent stars.

The Sun is somewhat less than 30,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy, in a location with nothing much to distinguish it. From our position inside the Milky Way Galaxy, we cannot see through to its far rim (at least not with ordinary light) because the space between the stars is not completely empty. It contains a sparse distribution of gas (mostly the simplest element, hydrogen) intermixed with tiny solid particles that we call interstellar dust . This gas and dust collect into enormous clouds in many places in the Galaxy, becoming the raw material for future generations of stars. Figure 5 shows an image of the disk of the Galaxy as seen from our vantage point.

Figure 5. Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are inside the Milky Way Galaxy , we see its disk in cross-section flung across the sky like a great milky white avenue of stars with dark “rifts” of dust. In this dramatic image, part of it is seen above Trona Pinnacles in the California desert. (credit: Ian Norman)

Typically, the interstellar material is so extremely sparse that the space between stars is a much better vacuum than anything we can produce in terrestrial laboratories. Yet, the dust in space, building up over thousands of light-years, can block the light of more distant stars. Like the distant buildings that disappear from our view on a smoggy day in Los Angeles, the more distant regions of the Milky Way cannot be seen behind the layers of interstellar smog. Luckily, astronomers have found that stars and raw material shine with various forms of light, some of which do penetrate the smog, and so we have been able to develop a pretty good map of the Galaxy.

Recent observations, however, have also revealed a rather surprising and disturbing fact. There appears to be more—much more—to the Galaxy than meets the eye (or the telescope). From various investigations, we have evidence that much of our Galaxy is made of material we cannot currently observe directly with our instruments. We therefore call this component of the Galaxy dark matter . We know the dark matter is there by the pull its gravity exerts on the stars and raw material we can observe, but what this dark matter is made of and how much of it exists remain a mystery. Furthermore, this dark matter is not confined to our Galaxy; it appears to be an important part of other star groupings as well.

Figure 6: Star Cluster. This large star cluster is known by its catalog number, M9. It contains some 250,000 stars and is seen more clearly from space using the Hubble Space Telescope. It is located roughly 25,000 light-years away. (credit: NASA, ESA)

By the way, not all stars live by themselves, as the Sun does. Many are born in double or triple systems with two, three, or more stars revolving about each other. Because the stars influence each other in such close systems, multiple stars allow us to measure characteristics that we cannot discern from observing single stars. In a number of places, enough stars have formed together that we recognized them as star clusters (Figure 6). Some of the largest of the star clusters that astronomers have cataloged contain hundreds of thousands of stars and take up volumes of space hundreds of light-years across.

You may hear stars referred to as “eternal,” but in fact no star can last forever. Since the “business” of stars is making energy, and energy production requires some sort of fuel to be used up, eventually all stars run out of fuel. This news should not cause you to panic, though, because our Sun still has at least 5 or 6 billion years to go. Ultimately, the Sun and all stars will die, and it is in their death throes that some of the most intriguing and important processes of the universe are revealed. For example, we now know that many of the atoms in our bodies were once inside stars. These stars exploded at the ends of their lives, recycling their material back into the reservoir of the Galaxy. In this sense, all of us are literally made of recycled “star dust.”

• Astronomy. Provided by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].

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Tour of the Universe

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Our Universe contains mind-boggling amounts of space and matter! Everything you see in the night sky has a place in space. This program takes you on a journey through thousands of stars and galaxies, where you’ll see some of the oldest light in the Universe. Includes a night sky tour.

Public Planetarium Show: Tour of the Universe

Date : June 20 @ 1pm and 3pm

Price : $6 for Adults, $4 for Members, $4 for Kids

Welcome to ViewSpace

Hero interactive.

Explore the Universe with Interactives and Videos

About ViewSpace

What is viewspace.

ViewSpace is a free, web-based collection of digital interactives and videos highlighting the latest developments in astronomy and Earth science.

ViewSpace gives you the opportunity to explore our planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe. Provided free with the support of NASA, ViewSpace is developed by a team of scientists, educators, and communication specialists who collaborate to ensure that content is accurate, up-to-date, engaging, relevant, and accessible to a wide audience.

Interactives

ViewSpace interactives allow you to explore objects and materials from different perspectives, discovering how we can combine information to better understand the universe.

Different forms of light: Explore visible and invisible wavelengths of light that help us understand features like the dusty brim of the Sombrero Galaxy roughly 30 million light-years away.

Hidden objects: Unveil invisible light to reveal hidden objects like the stars forming inside Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust 7,500 light-years from Earth.

ViewSpace videos tell the stories of the planets, stars, galaxies, and universe, giving viewers the opportunity to experience space and Earth as seen with satellites and telescopes.

Astronomy: Explore the sky with stories told through spectacular imagery from space telescopes.

Earth science: Gain new perspectives on our home planet based on data gathered by Earth-orbiting satellites.

ViewSpace is produced by the Office of Public Outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute , in partnership with the NASA's Universe of Learning project and NASA's Earth Observing System, Hubble Space Telescope Project, and James Webb Space Telescope Project.

ViewSpace has been exhibited in museums, planetariums, and science centers across the country since 2000.

What Will You Explore?

The Latest Discoveries in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Recent Natural Events and Satellite Views of Earth

In-depth Stories of How Science and the Universe Work

Stunning Imagery and Accessible Explanations

Sample Images from ViewSpace

What objects and materials make up the universe, and how do we study the invisible as well as the visible?

Data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory are used to create a map of dark matter (blue) in galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745.

What are galaxies; how do they vary; and how do they form, interact, and change over time?

The Penguin and the Egg (Arp 142) is a pair of galaxies that are being distorted by their mutual gravitational attraction.

How do the Sun, planets, moons, comets, and asteroids interact as a system?

Saturn’s moon Titan casts a shadow as it passes between the planet and the Sun.

How do telescopes help us better understand the objects and materials that light up the sky?

With telescopes, we can see details of the Milky Way, including glowing clouds of dust and gas like the Lobster Nebula.

How fast is the universe expanding and what does this tell us about its past and future?

Over time, space expands, stretching the wavelenghts of light and causing the distant galaxies seen in the Ultra Deep Field image from the Hubble Space Telescope to look redder than the closer galaxies.

How do we detect and study planets orbiting other stars?

Changes in the brightness of starlight, measured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, indicates the presence of a planet orbiting the star.

What happens to stars at the end of their lives, and how do stellar explosions affect the space around them?

Visible, infrared, and X-ray light from supernova remnant Cassiopeia A reveal remains of an exploded star.

How can we use interactions between light and matter to probe the deep universe?

The enormous mass of galaxy cluster Abell 370 bends the space around it, magnifying and distorting the light from more distant galaxies into arc-like streaks.

How are astronomers combining data from space and ground-based telescopes, particle detectors, and gravitational wave detectors to understand cosmic objects, processes, and events?

An artist’s illustration depicts the detection of neutrino particles and gamma rays emitted by a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy.

How and where do stars form, and how do they shape their surroundings?

Pillars of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula are sculpted and illuminated by stellar winds and high-energy radiation of bright stars.

How can we use satellites to map, study, and monitor Earth’s land surface, oceans, and atmosphere?

An image captured by the Landsat 8 satellite in May 2018 shows active lava flows from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii.

What evidence supports our theories of how the universe formed and how it has evolved over time?

A map of the sky from the Planck Space Telescope highlights variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation—energy left over from the big bang some 13.8 billion years ago.

What tools and methods do scientists use to study Earth and space?

NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite (SMAP) helps scientists monitor droughts, predict floods, and improve farm productivity.

Is Earth unique? Are we alone?

Observations from space telescopes have revealed thousands of exoplanets of different of sizes, compositions, temperatures, and atmospheres, including seven rocky Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, 40 light-years from Earth (artist’s illustration).

Where Is ViewSpace?

ViewSpace videos are on exhibit at museums, science centers, and planetariums across the country.

ViewSpace interactives are available online.

Use the map to find a ViewSpace video location near you.

Location Spotlight

Worcester, Massachusetts

Westcave Preserve

Round Mountain, Texas

Lowell Observatory

Flagstaff, Arizona

Maryland Science Center

Baltimore, Maryland

Edelman Planetarium at Rowan University

Glassboro, New Jersey

Clark Planetarium

Salt Lake City, Utah

Becoming a ViewSpace Venue

ViewSpace provides informal learning sites with engaging, accurate, relevant, and up-to-date astronomy and Earth science content. Access to ViewSpace is free, requiring only registration, a computer or Smart TV, and persistent internet access. ViewSpace content is self-updating and videos can be set to play automatically, requiring minimal staff effort to maintain.

Join hundreds of others in featuring ViewSpace as part of your exhibits.

Who Produces and Supports ViewSpace?

ViewSpace is produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and is provided free of charge through financial support and subject matter expertise from the NASA’s Universe of Learning project, NASA’s Earth Observing System Project Science Office, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Project, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Project.

Funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, NASA’s Universe of Learning is an integrated astrophysics STEM learning and literacy project developed through a partnership between the Space Telescope Science Institute, Caltech/IPAC, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.

NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) is a coordinated series of satellites designed to observe Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. As part of the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, the EOS Project Science Office (EOSPSO) is committed to sharing information with both researchers and the general public.

The Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope are two of NASA’s flagship missions designed to explore and advance our understanding of the universe. The missions’ communications programs are dedicated to sharing scientific advances and making the world’s astronomical information accessible to all.