Expedition Reef
Showing Wednesday, Friday, Sunday at 1:00 pm
Also showing on Mondays during AISD holidays and summer.
35 minutes
Embark on a journey into the hidden world of coral reefs in this all-digital planetarium show exploring some of our planet’s most biodiverse—and critically threatened—ecosystems. Dive into the heart of the Academy’s iconic Philippine coral reef tank as thousands of tropical fish flutter by. Travel the globe to explore coral reefs teeming with life and learn how scientists are racing to develop sustainable solutions to protect these vitally important ecosystems for the future. Along the way, discover how corals live, breathe, and reproduce, supporting a quarter of all marine life on Earth and providing critical benefits to human communities in our ever-changing world.
Grossology & You
Also showing on Mondays during AISD holidays and summer.
Saturn the Ring World
Showing Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 1:00 pm.
22 Minutes
Saturn is the true “Lord of the Rings”. After nearly seven years in transit, the two-story Cassini-Huygens spacecraft began orbiting Saturn on July 1, 2004. Cassini continues to explore Saturn and its moons during its extended mission, while the Huygens probe had landed on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The Cassini Saturn encounter began with a flyby of Saturn’s farthest moon, Phoebe. See Saturn up-close and all-around-you inside our dome theater.
Phantom of the Universe
Showing Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 3:00pm
Phantom of the Universe showcases 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.
Secrets of the Cardboard Rocket
Showing Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 11:00am.
30 minutes
Embark on an amazing expedition as students join two children who build a rocket out of a refrigerator box and take a fantastic journey through the Solar System alongside their ship’s navigator, a talking astronomy book. Viewers will explore the planets of the solar system in this animated feature.
Hot & Energetic Universe
The planetarium documentary “The Hot and Energetic Universe” presents with the use of Immersive Visualisations and real images the achievements of modern astronomy, the most advanced terrestrial and orbital observatories, the basic principles of 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. The XMM-Newton and the Integral missions are leading the exploration of the X-ray and gamma-ray universe. ESA‘s mission ATHENA, to be launched in 2028, will carry the most sensitive X-ray telescope ever and it will be the flagship of all high X-ray missions.
