Rose Center for Earth and Space
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The Rose Center for Earth and Space is a notable part of the American Museum of Natural History. The main entrance is located on the northern side of the museum on 81st Street near Central Park West. The Center's complete name is The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space.
The center is an extensive reworking of the old Hayden Planetarium, which dated back to 1935. An entirely new building, designeed by James Polshek, opened to the public on February 19, 2000, featuring a seven-story-tall glass cube that encloses the 87-foot-diameter Hayden Sphere. The top half of the Sphere houses the Space Theater, one of the world’s pre-eminent planetariums, which incorporates high-resolution fulldome video to create “space shows,” based in scientific visualization of current astrophysical data.The shows run every half hour from 10:30 to 4:30 except on the first Friday of the month. On that Friday the shows run from 10:30 to 7:30. Right outside the doors of the theater there is a flat-screen TV presentation that gives you a preview of what to expect once the show starts.
Three shows have premiered in the theater thusfar. The first show, Passport to the Universe, opened with the new theater and features the voice of Tom Hanks as a guide along a voyage from Earth to the edge of the observable universe. The Search for Life: Are We Alone? debuted in 2002, with narration by Harrison Ford describing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. Opened in 2006 and narrated by Robert Redford, Cosmic Collisions examines the role that impacts have played in shaping the universe—including visualizations of Earth’s magnetosphere, the formation of the Moon, and the metorite impact that contributed to the end of the age of dinosaurs.
The Big Bang Theater occupies the bottom half of the Hayden Sphere. Utilizing a screen that measures 36 feet in diameter over an eight-foot deep bowl, a four-minute program depicts the birth of the universe, with a voiceover by Maya Angelou. The Big Bang Theater serves as an introduction to the Heilbrun Cosmic Pathway, a spiral which wraps around the sphere, connecting the second and first floors of the Rose Center. The cosmic pathway provides a timeline of the universe’s history from the Big Bang to the present day.
Other exhibits can be found outside the sphere. The Gottesman Hall of the Planet Earth has displays that illustrate the Earth’s geological history and weather patterns. The Cullman Hall of the Universe focuses on topics ranging from planets to stars, life on other worlds to current cosmology. The Scales of the Universe exhibit makes comparisons between the size of the Hayden Sphere and other objects in the universe presented at appropriate relative scale. There is also a photographic exhibit about the Apollo moon landings. The photographs are where you wait to be taken to the Space Theater.
