All programs and presentations are 30-60 minutes in length. All shows except for private shows, certain special events, and birthday parties are free and open to the public.
Register for public shows below to reserve a seat. New show registrations will be released roughly every 10 days.
Every second the Sun emits million times more energy than the world consumes every year. Where does such a huge amount of power come from? Discover our star through the breathtaking time lapses. Thanks to the real images taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory and processed by advanced mathematical methods, you will experience the true nature of the Sun and find out that it is far from being as calm as it seems at first glance.
Show Topics: SDO, Solar Activity, Sun-Earth Environment, Space Weather
Show Duration: 11 Minutes
Target Audience: Ages 8 and up, Adults
Discusses the impacts of space weather and how the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field protects all life on Earth. "Solar Quest" features the role of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and how scientists are using it as a way to identify and predict severe space weather.
Show Topics: Sun-Earth Environment, Space Weather, SDO
Show Duration: 12 Minutes
Target Audience: Ages 8 and up
Funded by NASA and developed by the Michigan Science Center, this fulldome planetarium show takes viewers on a trip back through time to the birth of the sun. Discover how it came to support life, how it threatens life as we know it and how its energy will one day fade away.
Teacher Resource Guide Available HERE
Show Topics: Sun-Earth Environment, Space Weather
Show Duration: 20 Minutes
Target Audience: Middle School (5th-8th grade)
Over seven months of the Aurora Borealis in Arctic Circle skies were captured as timelapse images in high resolution and the results are spectacular. For the first time the aurora has been captured as it was meant to be experienced, as a display that covers the entire sky. This immersive show shares the science behind the aurora and tells the story of the quest to find and photograph the aurora for wraparound display in fulldome theaters.
Show Topics: Aurora, Sunspots, Solar Storms
Show Duration: 27 Minutes
Target Audience: General Public, 7th grade and up
The show opens with the first era of space exploration in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We see what that era of landers and orbiters taught us about our nearest neighbor including the discovery of the Moon’s origin, composition, structure and the accessibility of raw materials on its surface. The Google Lunar XPRIZE is introduced as the largest incentivized competition to date, designed to democratize space and create new opportunities for eventual human and robotic presence on the Moon. We see the engineering and innovation steps taken by the internationally distributed teams competing to land a spacecraft on the Moon and vie for additional prizes. We highlight the human spirit of competition and collaboration as teams take on this audacious challenge. Who will win the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE? The audience is taken through a successful launch, landing and lunar surface travel. The show ends with a stunning glimpse of a plausible scenario for our future on the Moon.
Show Topics: Space Exploration
Show Duration: 25 minutes
Target Audience: 4th grade and up
Join two children on a magical journey through the Solar System, aided by a talking astronomy book, a cardboard rocket, and a vivid imagination. During this imaginative show, audiences will land on Venus, fly through the rings of Saturn, and discover the secrets of the Solar System. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Sun, planets
Show Duration: 40 minutes
Target Audience: Families and School Groups, Grades K-4
A look at the Earth, Moon, Sun system and how it has influenced
life on Earth. Learn about tides, the phases of the Moon, seasons, and
see eclipses. A production of NKU, this show includes computer generated
simulations and high resolution photography. Earth, Moon, Sun was voted best full-dome presentation at the 2009 conference of the Digistar planetariums.
Show Topics: tides, moon phases, eclipses, seasons
Show Duration: 19 minutes
Target Audience: 4th grade and up
From breathtaking landscapes, to violent volcanic eruptions, to Saturn's icy rings, New Horizons transports you on a majestic journey through the planets and moons of our celestial neighborhood. Our journey begins as we follow a comet through interplanetary space. On each of our exotic ports of call, real data and images from modern space probes are transformed into stunning wrap-around visualizations. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Solar System, Planets, Comets, Moons
Show Duration: 23 minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
What keeps Galaxies together? What are the building blocks of the Universe? What makes the Universe look the way it looks today? Researchers all around the world try to answer these questions. We know today that approximately a quarter of the Universe is filled with a mysterious glue: Dark Matter. We know that it is out there. But we have no idea what it is made out of.
This planetarium show takes you on the biggest quest of contemporary astrophysics. You will see why we know that Dark Matter exists, and how this search is one of the most challenging and exciting searches science has to offer. Join the scientists on their hunt for Dark Matter with experiments in space and deep underground. Will they be able to solve the Dark Matter Mystery?
Show Topics: Dark Matter, MACHOS, WIMPS
Show Duration: 38 Minutes
Target Audience: 6th grade and up
Phantom of the Universe is a new planetarium show that will showcase an exciting exploration of dark matter, from the Big Bang to its anticipated discovery at the Large Hadron Collider. The show reveals the first hints of its existence through the eyes of Fritz Zwicky, the scientist who coined the term "dark matter." It describes the astral choreography witnessed by Vera Rubin in the Andromeda galaxy and then plummets deep underground to see the most sensitive dark matter detector on Earth, housed in a former gold mine. From there, it journeys across space and time to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, speeding alongside particles before they collide in visually stunning explosions of light and sound, while learning how scientists around the world are collaborating to track down the constituents of dark matter.
Show Topics: Dark Matter, Large Hadron Collider
Show Duration: 28 Minutes
Target Audience: 6th grade and up
Dark explains and explores the nature of Dark Matter, the missing 80% of the mass of the Universe. The search for Dark Matter is the most pressing astrophysical problem of our time – the solution to which will help us understand why the Universe is as it is, where it came from, and how it has evolved over billions of years – the unimaginable depths of deep time, of which a human life is but a flickering instant. Dark explores the usefulness of the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia.
Show Topics: Dark Matter, Parkes Radio Telescope
Show Duration: 20 Minutes
Target Audience: 6th grade and up
The night sky, both beautiful and mysterious, has been the subject of campfire stories, ancient myths and awe for as long as there have been people. A desire to comprehend the Universe may well be humanity’s oldest shared intellectual experience. Yet only recently have we truly begun to grasp our place in the vast cosmos. To learn about this journey of celestial discovery, from the theories of the ancient Greek astronomers to today’s grandest telescopes, we invite you to experience From Earth to the Universe. From the European Southern Observatory. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Historical Astronomy, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe
Show Duration: 30 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
The Hot and Energetic Universe presents the achievements of the modern astronomy, the most advanced terrestrial and orbital observatories, the basic principles electromagnetic radiation and the natural phenomena related to the High Energy Astrophysics. High Energy Astrophysics plays a key role in understanding the universe. These radiations reveal the processes in the hot and violent universe. High Energy Astrophysics probes hot gas in clusters of galaxies, which are the most massive objects in the universe. It also probes hot gas accreting around supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. Finally, high energy radiation provides important information about our own galaxy, neutron stars, supernova remnants and stars like our Sun which emit copious amounts of high energy radiation. Europe plays a leading role in high energy astrophysics research. From the European Southern Observatory. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: hot gas, supermassive black holes, high energy astrophysics
Show Duration: 29 Minutes
Target Audience: 6th grade and up
Travel back in time and witness the ancient wonders of the world as they have not been seen for thousands of years. Travel to Egypt to visit the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramids, to what is now Turkey to see the original Mausoleum, to Babylon in what is now Iraq to explore the fabled Hanging Gardens, to Greece to tour the Temples of Zeus and Artemis and the island of Rhodes to stand in the shadow of the towering Colossus. We will investigate the theories of how these wonders were created and then take a tour of some of the universe’s greatest wonders. Narrated by Sean Bean.
Show Topics: Ancient wonders of the world, wonders of the universe
Show Duration: 32 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
Peer deep into space through the eyes of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and travel back billions of years in time to witness the birth of the universe. On this breathtaking excursion, you'll witness the formation of galaxies and explore some of the most wondrous nebulae and astronomical structures yet discovered. As your travels continue, you'll fly deep into our own Milky Way Galaxy and return home to Earth on a spectacular tour through the Solar System. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Milky Way, formation of galaxies
Show Duration: 21 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
Journey to the Center of the Milky Way
Embark on a journey to the center of the Milky Way and travel faster than light, from the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile right to the centre of our own galaxy, where a black hole is consuming anything that strays into its path. Be immersed in 84 million stars, each hiding mysteries waiting to be solved. Are there planets around them, perhaps with moons? Do they have water? From the European Southern Observatory. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Black hole, Milky Way
Show Duration: 7 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
Not all stars are created equal. Some are massive. Others are tiny; almost insignificant. The specific characteristics of a star will determine what type of life it will lead, how long it might live and even the type of death it will die. We will witness the amazing variety of stars and peer into their secret lives. Narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart of TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men films. Winner of 4 Telly Awards.
Show Topics: Stellar lifecycles, star death, star birth
Show Duration: 28 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
There are places where the night sky has no constellations. No Orion, no Big Dipper, nothing but a few lonely, far away stars and a few faint, ghostly patches of light. Most stars lie within the crowded boundaries of galaxies, travelling with their brothers and sisters in a vast galactic family. But some find themselves on their own, deep within voids between the galaxies. These are the cosmic castaways. An original production of the Ward Beecher Planetarium, this program is based partially on research by YSU’s astrophysicists Dr. John Feldmeier and Dr. Patrick Durrell. Cosmic Castaways by Ward Beecher Planetarium is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Show Topics: Galaxy collisions, constellations
Show Duration: 20 Minutes
Target Audience: middle school and up
This program thoroughly covers the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. From the history of its creation to the practical use it has for astronomers today. It begins with an in-depth look at the brightest stars we see from Earth, and then it takes the viewer on a fly-through of the exact locations of the closest stars to the Sun - using the HR diagram along the way.
Show Topics: HR Diagram, stars, red dwarfs
Show Duration: 15 Minutes
Target Audience: 9th grade and up
Get a tour of the night sky, seeing planets, constellations, and deep sky objects. Show can be modified for any age group.
Show Topics: constellations, night sky, planets
Show Duration: 10-30 Minutes
Target Audience: Everyone
An introduction to galaxies. Fulldome show Galaxies talks about the classifications and history of galaxies throughout time.
Show Topics: Galaxies
Show Duration: 13 minutes
Target Audience: 8th grade and up
Symphony of Science's musical description of black holes in the words of leading scientists and presenters.
Show Topics: black holes
Show Duration: 4 minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
A Way to Infinity is a fulldome documentary for digital planetaria that brings the audience on a journey into the understanding of the mathematical nature of Infinity, and its relation to the Universe. The soundtrack is based on unconventional jazz music by Kevin MacLeod in the movie, with a piece from Chris Martyn & Geoff Harvey. Produced by the Observatory and Planetarium in Hradec Králové.
Show Topics: Mathematics, infinity
Show Duration: 14 minutes
Target Audience: 9th grade and up
A virtual tour of the Cascade Cave at Carter Caves State Resort Park. Produced at Northern Kentucky University's Haile Digital Planetarium, this full dome documentary includes high resolution 4k Hyperlapse (motion time-lapse) video shot on location inside Cascade Cave. We will guide you through the cave as if you were walking on the public tour. This is a great introduction to caves and the planetarium is completely accessible. The show also includes tour of the park and its trails. Take the virtual tour before you see the real thing.
Show Topics: Geology, Cave formation
Show Duration: 41 Minutes
Target Audience: 4th grade and up
Starry skies are a vanishing treasure because light pollution is erasing our view of the Universe. Such pollution not only threatens astronomy, but also disrupts wildlife and even affects human health. The yellow glows over cities and towns — seen so clearly from space — are evidence of tremendous amounts of money being wasted unnecessarily lighting up the sky. Losing the Dark introduces and illustrates some of these issues, suggesting three simple actions people can take to help mitigate it.
Show Topics: Environment, light pollution
Show Duration: 6 minutes
Target Audience: 4th grade and up
Microcosm allows audiences to explore the inner workings of the human body. You’ll shrink down to the size of a microbe and get injected into a patient who is suffering an infection from a mysterious virus. This immersive adventure is not only exciting, but educational as well. Traveling from the base of the eye to the interior of the beating heart. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Human body, biology
Show Duration: 16 Minutes
Target Audience: 6th grade and up
Follow a photon’s creation and journey across the galaxy to a young stargazer’s eye. The viewer follows the photon into the girl’s eye, learning the structures of the eye and their functions, prior to taking a ride on the optic nerve. Narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Show Topics: Light, sight, eye, biology
Show Duration: 27 minutes
Target Audience: 3rd grade and up
This live show contains excerpts from Shakespeare that show how his works explored man's place in the heavens by citing examples of how people of his time used the stars to guide them in their daily lives.
Show Topics: Literature, Shakespeare
Show Duration: 40 minutes
Target Audience: high school to adults
Any Science on a Sphere Dataset can be shown in the planetarium if given advanced notice. Topics vary from air, land, people, snow and ice, space, and water.
In this multimedia planetarium show about the science of aeronautics, you will discover the science of flight through the eyes of a young girl and her grandfather as they explore how birds, kites, planes, and models fly, and imagine where flight might take them. Learn about famous inventors and aviators of the past and the pioneers who first revealed the four forces of flight and how NASA is discovering new and safer ways to travel with the help of future engineers and aviators - like you!
Students will participate in science demonstrations that highlight the principles of flight (lift, thrust, weight and drag), Newton's Laws, gravity, the basic properties of air and the history of flight.
Show Topics: Physics of flight, airplanes
Show Duration: 25 minutes
Target Audience: 3rd-5th grade
This show follows two students as they learn how telescopes work and how the largest observatories in the world use these instruments to explore the mysteries of the universe. While looking through the telescopes, the students, along with the planetarium audience, see the Galilean Moons, Saturn's rings, and spiral structure of galaxies. They also learn about the discoveries of Galileo, Huygens, Newton, Hubble and many others. As the program progresses the show continues to use full dome video to present the story of the telescope and the astronomers who used them to make their dramatic discoveries. All skies and full dome video will transport the planetarium audiences to some of the largest observatories in the world, as well as places of historical significance.
Soundtrack recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra
Show Topics: Telescope, history
Show Duration: 26 minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
This video exploring the challenges and engineering behind the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. The video includes recorded narration and music. The narrator is astronaut Jeff Hoffman, one of the astronauts on Hubble’s 1993 Servicing Mission. Courtesy of the Museum of Science, Boston.
Show Topics: Hubble Space Telescope
Show Duration: 8 minutes
Target Audience: 3th grade and up
Fiske Planetarium is proud to present a film showcasing the research of Colorado University - Boulder Scientist Dr. James Green. This film highlights the current research of C.O.S. aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, the last instrument installed by the NASA astronauts. The Cosmic Origin Spectrograph is allowing us an unprecedented view into the vast spaces between galaxies which surrounds our own Milky Way. Join us in the exploration of this hidden universe as we decode the secrets to the Origins of the Cosmos.
Show Topics: Spectroscopy, Light, Hubble Space Telescope
Show Duration: 30 minutes
Target Audience: Middle school and up
Investigate the boundary between our Solar System and the rest of our galaxy in "IBEX: Search for the Edge of the Solar System." Follow the creation of NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), its mission, and how it works. Watch the trailer.
Show Topics: Space Science, NASA, Solar System Boundary, Solar Wind
Show Duration: 26 minutes
Target Audience: Middle school and up
Join two children on a magical journey through the Solar System, aided by a talking astronomy book, a cardboard rocket, and a vivid imagination. During this imaginative show, audiences will land on Venus, fly through the rings of Saturn, and discover the secrets of the Solar System. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Sun, planets
Show Duration: 40 minutes
Target Audience: Families and School Groups, Grades K-4
The planetarium show follows Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Elmo as they explore the night sky with Hu Hu Zhu, a Muppet from Zhima Jie, the Chinese co-production of Sesame Street. Together, they take an imaginary trip from Sesame Street to the moon, where they discover how different it is from Earth.
One World, One Sky is a brilliant spectacle of light and color as the furry friends watch the stars twinkle over Sesame Street. Children attending the show can interact as they watch, drawing constellations and counting the time it takes the sun to set. The show aims to nurture a child’s natural sense of wonder about the night sky.
Teacher's Guide with activities available.
Show Topics: Big Dipper, North Star, Sun, Moon
Show Duration: 27 minutes
Target Audience: Pre-K to 2nd grade
Astro Otters Jr. is a module-based astronomy education program for grades K-4. The package contains 28 topic modules, plus two "bookends," for a total of 30 short videos. The modules can be mixed and matched for a nearly endless variety of presentations.
Model Topics:
Target Audience: Ages 5-9
Explore the motions of the stars, Sun, Moon and planets - are they moving or are we? Learn about daily motion and the Earth's rotation; the Moon's monthly orbit of our planet and how the Earth takes a full year to travel around the Sun. The Solar System is like a giant celestial clock powered by gravity. Courtesy of Ott Planetarium.
Show Topics: Day and night, daily motion, moon
Show Duration: 5 minutes
Target Audience: Grades K-4
How big is the distance between the Earth and the Sun - or between the Sun and the other planets? Discover the Lightyear, the very large 'ruler' that scientists use to measure the size of Space. Be amazed by the ever-increasing distances to the nearest stars, to the edge of the Milky Way and to the farthest galaxies in the Universe. Courtesy of Ott Planetarium.
Show Topics: Distance, galaxies, planets
Show Duration: 13 minutes
Target Audience: Grades K-4
What's the difference between a sphere and a disc? A ball and a pancake? Lift off in a rocket and find out! Fly to the Moon and discover an 'orbit'. Visit the planets to see if they are round like a ball or round like a pancake. What about the Solar System, is it round like a pancake or round like a ball?
Show Topics: Shapes, disk, sphere
Show Duration: 9 minutes
Target Audience: Grades Pre-K to 1
Over seven months of the Aurora Borealis in Arctic Circle skies were captured as timelapse images in high resolution and the results are spectacular. For the first time the aurora has been captured as it was meant to be experienced, as a display that covers the entire sky. This immersive show shares the science behind the aurora and tells the story of the quest to find and photograph the aurora for wraparound display in fulldome theaters.
Show Topics: Aurora, Sunspots, Solar Storms
Show Duration: 27 Minutes
Target Audience: General Public, 7th grade and up
Travel back in time and witness the ancient wonders of the world as they have not been seen for thousands of years. Travel to Egypt to visit the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramids, to what is now Turkey to see the original Mausoleum, to Babylon in what is now Iraq to explore the fabled Hanging Gardens, to Greece to tour the Temples of Zeus and Artemis and the island of Rhodes to stand in the shadow of the towering Colossus. We will investigate the theories of how these wonders were created and then take a tour of some of the universe’s greatest wonders. Narrated by Sean Bean.
Show Topics: Ancient wonders of the world, wonders of the universe
Show Duration: 32 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
The night sky, both beautiful and mysterious, has been the subject of campfire stories, ancient myths and awe for as long as there have been people. A desire to comprehend the Universe may well be humanity’s oldest shared intellectual experience. Yet only recently have we truly begun to grasp our place in the vast cosmos. To learn about this journey of celestial discovery, from the theories of the ancient Greek astronomers to today’s grandest telescopes, we invite you to experience From Earth to the Universe. From the European Southern Observatory. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Historical Astronomy, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe
Show Duration: 30 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
Peer deep into space through the eyes of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and travel back billions of years in time to witness the birth of the universe. On this breathtaking excursion, you'll witness the formation of galaxies and explore some of the most wondrous nebulae and astronomical structures yet discovered. As your travels continue, you'll fly deep into our own Milky Way Galaxy and return home to Earth on a spectacular tour through the Solar System. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: Milky Way, formation of galaxies
Show Duration: 21 Minutes
Target Audience: 5th grade and up
The Hot and Energetic Universe presents the achievements of the modern astronomy, the most advanced terrestrial and orbital observatories, the basic principles electromagnetic radiation and the natural phenomena related to the High Energy Astrophysics. High Energy Astrophysics plays a key role in understanding the universe. These radiations reveal the processes in the hot and violent universe. High Energy Astrophysics probes hot gas in clusters of galaxies, which are the most massive objects in the universe. It also probes hot gas accreting around supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. Finally, high energy radiation provides important information about our own galaxy, neutron stars, supernova remnants and stars like our Sun which emit copious amounts of high energy radiation. Europe plays a leading role in high energy astrophysics research. From the European Southern Observatory. Este programa está disponible también en español.
Show Topics: hot gas, supermassive black holes, high energy astrophysics
Show Duration: 29 Minutes
Target Audience: 6th grade and up
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