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Rose Center for Earth and Space

 

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Rose Center for Earth and Space



 
 
The Rose Center for Earth and Space is a notable part of the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, USA, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world....
 in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
. The Center's complete name is The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space. The main entrance is located on the northern side of the museum on 81st Street near Central Park West
Central Park West

Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States.As its name indicates, CPW forms the western edge of Central Park....
.

The Rose Center was designed by James Stewart Polshek and Todd H. Schliemann, Polshek Partnership Architects
James Polshek

James Stewart Polshek is an American architect based in New York City. He is founder and senior design counsel of Polshek Partnership architects....
, and the exhibition design is by Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Ralph Appelbaum

Widely acknowledged as the world's largest and preeminent museum exhibition design firm, Ralph Appelbaum Associates has offices in New York City, London and Beijing....
. The center is an extensive reworking of the old Hayden Planetarium
Hayden Planetarium

|-| |-| |-| |}The Hayden Planetarium is a public planetarium located on Central Park West, New York City, next to and organizationally part of the American Museum of Natural History....
, which dated back to 1935.






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The Rose Center for Earth and Space is a notable part of the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, USA, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world....
 in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
. The Center's complete name is The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space. The main entrance is located on the northern side of the museum on 81st Street near Central Park West
Central Park West

Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States.As its name indicates, CPW forms the western edge of Central Park....
.

The Rose Center was designed by James Stewart Polshek and Todd H. Schliemann, Polshek Partnership Architects
James Polshek

James Stewart Polshek is an American architect based in New York City. He is founder and senior design counsel of Polshek Partnership architects....
, and the exhibition design is by Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Ralph Appelbaum

Widely acknowledged as the world's largest and preeminent museum exhibition design firm, Ralph Appelbaum Associates has offices in New York City, London and Beijing....
. The center is an extensive reworking of the old Hayden Planetarium
Hayden Planetarium

|-| |-| |-| |}The Hayden Planetarium is a public planetarium located on Central Park West, New York City, next to and organizationally part of the American Museum of Natural History....
, which dated back to 1935. An entirely new building 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 planetarium
Planetarium

File:Planetarium-Thursday-1-July-2008.JPGFile:Belgrade Planetarium theatre day.jpgFile:Belgrade Planetarium theatre night.jpgA planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation....
s, which incorporates high-resolution fulldome video
Fulldome

Fulldome is used to refer to immersive dome-based video projection environments. The dome, horizontal or tilted, is filled with real-time or pre-rendered computer animations, live capture images, or composited environments....
 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.

As of 2007, three shows have premiered in the theater. The first show, Passport to the Universe, opened with the new theater and features the voice of Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American film actor, film director, voice-over artist, writer and film producer. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies before achieving success as a dramatic actor portraying several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia , the title role in Forrest Gump, Commander J...
 as a guide along a voyage from Earth
Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Wiktionary:Terra.Note that by International Astronomical Union convention, the term "Terra" is used for naming extensive land masses, rather...
 to the edge of the observable universe
Observable universe

In Big Bang cosmology, the observable universe consists of the galaxies and other matter that we can in principle observe from Earth in the present day, because light from those objects has had time to reach us since the beginning of the cosmological expansion....
. The Search for Life: Are We Alone? debuted in 2002, with narration by Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford is an United Statesn actor. Ford is best known for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy, and as the Indiana Jones in the Indiana Jones franchise#Films film series....
 describing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life which does not originate from Earth. It is the subject of astrobiology and its existence remains hypothetical, because there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life which has been generally accepted by the mainstream scientific community....
. Opened in 2006 and narrated by Robert Redford
Robert Redford

Charles Robert Redford Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an Academy Award-winning United States film director, actor, film producer, businessman, model , environmentalism, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival....
, Cosmic Collisions examines the role that impacts have played in shaping the universe—including visualizations of Earth’s magnetosphere
Magnetosphere

A magnetosphere is a highly magnetized region around and possessed by an astronomical object. Earth is surrounded by a magnetosphere, as are the magnetized planets Mercury , Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune....
, the formation of the Moon, and the meteorite impact
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

The Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately , was a large-scale Extinction event of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time....
 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
Big Bang

The Big Bang is the physical cosmology model of the initial conditions and subsequent development of the universe supported by the most comprehensive and accurate explanations from current scientific method and observation....
, with a voiceover by Maya Angelou. The Big Bang Theater serves as an introduction to the Heilbrun Cosmic Pathway
Heilbrun Cosmic Pathway

The Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway is an interactive exhibit located inside the Rose Center for Earth and Space located at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City....
, 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 throughout the first floor level of the Rose Center.

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