By AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Added: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to Elliot for the link.
http://www.amnh.org/news/2009/12/the-known-universe/

After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

The magic of this film, though, happens as the inky black expands. Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.
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Continue reading
http://www.amnh.org/news/2009/12/the-known-universe/


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A post from Phil Plait on Bad Astronomy Blog
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/20/create-your-own-tour-of-the-universe/

Create your own tour of the Universe!

On Friday I posted about a video created by the NYC American Museum of Natural History taking you on a tour of the Universe.

I just received a note from Ben Oppenheimer, the Associate Curator and Professor at the Department of Astrophysics of the American Museum of Natural History (phew!), thanking me for linking to the video, but also noting that there is a lot more information available online about it, including background about the production, and his own blog.

But perhaps the coolest thing is that you can download their atlas — which has stars, galaxies, nebulae, everything — and use it to create your own fly-through of the Universe!

The software is not all that simple, but it can be used to create all sorts of tours of space. If you download it and make some, then post links to what you’ve done in the comments!
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Continue to article for links and comments on his site
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/20/create-your-own-tour-of-the-universe/

TAGGED: SCIENCE, SPACE

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