October
Living in the Age of Airplanes
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
October 7 & 8
Narrated by Harrison Ford, this show reminds us how the airplane has profoundly changed the world and our lives. Beautifully filmed in 18 countries, across all seven continents, the film renews our appreciation for one of the most extraordinary and awe inspiring inventions in the modern world.
Ningaloo: Australia's Other Great Reef
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
October 20 & 21
One of the world’s largest fringing coral reefs, Ningaloo Reef is visible from space and stretches along the north west coast of Western Australia for 260km. We travel in a two-person submarine, Odyssea, on an underwater adventure. Rich in coral, we experience this highway for the planet’s largest and smallest fish, including the whale shark. The live action fulldome film is an immersive voyage of discovery as we witness Ningaloo Reef and the rare natural wonder and spectacle of life – coral spawning.
November
Journey to Palomar
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
November 3 & 4
The Journey to Palomar, the result of more than five years’ work by Los Angeles filmmakers Todd and Robin Mason, traces Hale’s remarkable life as he struggles both personally and professionally to build the great telescopes at the Yerkes Observatory (near Chicago), the Mount Wilson Observatory (above Los Angeles), and finally the million-pound telescope on Palomar Mountain (near San Diego), considered the “moon shot” of the 1930s and ‘40s. It was a struggle to invent the technology, so daunting that many said it couldn't be done. Again and again, Hale embarked on a seemingly impossible quest to persuade the richest men in America to contribute to his vision of American astronomy.
The Cosmic Webb
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
November 11
In a live planetarium show, we will use the three movements of a London Symphony Orchestra recording of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto to delve into three aspects of the universe James Webb is investigating with the best technology humanity has sent into space to date.
Science Speaker Series: Sun and Climate
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
November 14
The Sun enables life on Earth. If the luminosity of the Sun changes, then the Earth’s climate changes. Dark spots on the Sun have been known for thousands of years. Do sunspots reduce the Sun's luminosity and lower the Earth's temperature? Amazingly, the sun's luminosity increases when it has a particularly large number of sunspots. This talk explains the cause of this surprising fact and shows how the sunspot cycle can be traced back thousands of years and how it affects the Earth in various ways.
December
Uncovering Black Holes
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
December 1 & 2
From the collapsed cores of massive stars to the dark, unfathomable behemoths lurking at the centers of galaxies, we will explore the wealth of knowledge scientists have gathered about black holes across the universe. With the help of tools like the Event Horizon Telescope, we now know more about these mysterious objects than ever before, but how much can we truly discover about something that is so very good at offering only one-way trips within its depths?
Science Speaker Series: Indigenous Skies
The Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium
December 2
This lecture will cover the archaeology of astronomy as we tackle the history of Indigenous cosmology. Subjects will range from Sinagua petroglyphs depicting supernovas to Chumash star charts and other Indigenous stories about the cosmos. Joshua Ballze (Hia-Ced O’Odham, Tarahumar) is a scientific illustrator for various museum institutions and is a Board Member at the Museum of Indigenous People. His current work involves conservation of local Petroglyphs by utilizing 3D scanning technology and doing archaeological paintings for the Department of the Interior.