Planetarium Programs and Exhibits

Period*: Winter
Dates: 01/04/10 - 03/12/10
Show Schedule	Weekends
12:30pm	Texas Night Sky
1:00pm	Universe and Texas Night Sky
2:00pm	Texas Night Sky
2:30pm	Texas Night Sky
3:00pm	Seven Wonders and Texas Night Sky

*Monday holidays during this period (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on 1/18, Presidents’ Day on 2/15) will follow the Saturday show schedule.

Please be advised: During the school year, the Planetarium is open to the public on weekends and specifically-mentioned holidays and reserved for school groups during the week.

Period: Spring Break
Dates: 03/13/10 - 03/21/10
Show Schedule	Monday-Friday	Show Schedule	Weekends
12:45pm	Texas Night Sky
1:15pm	Secrets of the Sun and Texas Night Sky	1:00pm	Universe and Texas Night Sky
2:15pm	Texas Night Sky	2:00pm	Texas Night Sky
2:45pm	Texas Night Sky	2:30pm	Texas Night Sky
3:15pm	Universe and Texas Night Sky	3:00pm	Seven Wonders and Texas Night Sky
4:15pm	Texas Night Sky	4:00pm	Texas Night Sky

Please be advised: During the school year, the Planetarium is open to the public on weekends and specifically-mentioned holidays and reserved for school groups during the week.

Period: Spring
Dates: 03/22/10 - 05/28/10
Show Schedule	Weekends
1:00pm	Secrets of the Sun and Texas Night Sky
2:00pm	Texas Night Sky
2:30pm	Texas Night Sky
3:00pm	Universe and Texas Night Sky
4:00pm	Texas Night Sky

Please be advised: During the school year, the Planetarium is open to the public on weekends and specifically-mentioned holidays and reserved for school groups during the week.

ADMISSION
	Exhibits	IMAX®	Planetarium
Adult (18y-61y)	$9.50	$7.00	$3.50
Child (3y-11y)	$6.00	$6.00	$3.50
Youth (12y-17y)	$8.00	$6.00	$3.50
Student (18+ with ID)	$8.00	$6.00	$3.50
Senior (62+)	$8.00	$6.00	$3.50
	Buy Tickets	Buy Tickets	Buy Tickets

All children under 3 get FREE admission.

 

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Hubble Space Telescope Images

Orion Nebula

This image was unveiled at The Science Place and nationally on January 11, 2006. 
The Orion Nebula, a cavern of rolling dust and gas some 1,500 light-years away, is the nearest star-forming region to Earth. This image is the sharpest ever taken of the nebula.  The bright central region is home to the four heftiest stars in the nebula, collectively called the Trapezium. Ultraviolet light from them is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. Nearby are stars still young enough to have disks of material encircling them, too small to be seen clearly in this image. The disks are the building blocks of solar systems. Faint red stars near the bottom are myriad brown dwarfs. Sometimes called “failed stars,” brown dwarfs are cool objects too small to be ordinary stars because they cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. Astronomers used 104 five-color Hubble images to make this composite picture, adding ground-based photos to fill out the edges. The mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon. The observations were taken between 2004 and 2005.

 

 

Whirlpool Galaxy

The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194) appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. They are actually long lanes of stars and gas laced with dust. This sharpest-ever image, taken in January 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, illustrates a spiral galaxy's grand design, from its curving spiral arms, where young stars reside, to its yellowish central core, a home of older stars. The galaxy is nicknamed the Whirlpool because of its swirling structure.

The Whirlpool's most striking feature is its two curving arms, a hallmark of so-called grand-design spiral galaxies. Many spiral galaxies possess numerous, loosely shaped arms which make their spiral structure less pronounced. These arms serve an important purpose in spiral galaxies. They are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars. In the Whirlpool, the assembly line begins with the dark clouds of gas on the inner edge, then moves to bright pink star-forming regions, and ends with the brilliant blue star clusters along the outer edge.

Some astronomers believe that the Whirlpool's arms are so prominent because of the effects of a close encounter with NGC 5195, the small, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms. At first glance, the compact galaxy appears to be tugging on the arm. Hubble's clear view, however, shows that NGC 5195 is passing behind the Whirlpool. The small galaxy has been gliding past the Whirlpool for hundreds of millions of years.

Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/AURA)
 

Eagle Nebula

Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.

Inside the gaseous tower, stars may be forming. Some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsing under gravity. Other stars may be forming due to pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighboring hot stars. The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system. The fledgling stars continued to grow as they fed off the surrounding gas cloud. They abruptly stopped growing when light from the star cluster uncovered their gaseous cradles, separating them from their gas supply.

The dominant colors in the image were produced by gas energized by the star cluster's powerful ultraviolet light. The blue color at the top is from glowing oxygen. The red color in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen. The Eagle Nebula image was taken in November 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

MNS is the merger of the Dallas Museum of Natural History, The Science Place, and the Dallas Children's Museum, and is supported in part by the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and HP.