AMNH Hall of the Universe

Permanent hall at the American Museum of Natural History, opened in 2000

The Cullman Hall of the Universe sits on the ground floor of the Rose Center for Earth and Space. It was designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, who partnered with us in the museum's Exhibition Department to produce some media pieces.

Below: Planet Wall, home of my Greenhouse Effect and Other Planetary Systems visualizations, plus others by Joey Stein, and D. Dixon's orbital interactive.

Other Planetary Systems is a first-ever viz of extrasolar planets. Astrophysicist Frank Summers did the fly-throughs using a real star database. It's cool when it pans across the sky in a view you'd see from Earth, but then it zooms forward through space, past other stars, to reach each particular system.

Below is the Star Wall, home of some nice black hole and star life cycle visualizations by Jim Stoop. Beyond is the Galaxy Wall, where my Active Galactic Nuclei, Radio Galaxies, Spiral Galaxies, Elliptical Galaxies, Arp Peculiar Galaxies, and Globular Clusters live. Supernova projection in floor. Visualization by Jim Stoop.

Ultraviolet sun projection in floor. Real images, compiled by Jim Stoop.

Touchscreen kiosk about Formation & Evolution of the Universe, software by Funny Garbage.

The control room, home of the many rack-mounted Macs and a few PCs. The projections are all sourced by the Macs at XGA resolution. The touchscreen programs all run off of Mac G4s. Mac sysadmin Steve Godun did some nice Applescripting to make the Macs stable and secure. PCs and a HDTV server feed the Astro Bulletin, also done in-house by Smokey Forester in the Education Dept.

In Spring, 2000, V.P. of Exhibitions David Harvey and I redesigned the graphic elements below along the Timeline of Cosmic History ramp, which leads from the Big Bang Theater down to the Hall of the Universe, recounting major events in cosmic history along the way. Original exhibit design by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, touchscreen program created by Funny Garbage (demonstrated here by AMNH Media Manager Frank Rasor) . First, go here to see the "before" images and the renderings, then compare with these final photos.