School Programs

Poor Little Star, he is new to the universe and he just wants to see what else is out there.  He seems to be just an average star, and, judging by the reactions of the other stars he meets, he is never going to be anything special.  If only he could get himself some planets to make him special and give him a name.  On his journey of discovery, Little Star learns what makes each star special.  For some, it is their color and temperature, for others it may be their planets, and for others it is their stellar companions.  Along the way, he discovers that stars can combine to form larger groups, like star clusters and galaxies. Eventually,  Little Star finds his planets who tell them a little about themselves and give him his special name, the Sun.

It is the classic Greek story of the princess and her hero come to life!  Poor Andromeda is being sacrificed to the sea monster Cetus for the sins of her mother, Cassiopeia.  Just what lead to this calamity?   Where is her father, Cepheus, in all this?  It all sounds so terrible; she needs a hero.  Never fear for Perseus is almost here!  First, Perseus must deal with the Gorgon, Medusa, and then he will deal with Andromeda’s situation.  Will the story end happily?  Join us to find out.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

Follow the adventures of Cy, Annie and Armstrong (Cy’s dog), as they embark upon an unexpected journey into space!  Armstrong gets the kids into a little trouble with his antics on a field trip to the science center.  From there the adventure only grows as the three are whisked into space by a wise-cracking spaceship named Halley.  It's off to the moon for a little exploring, followed by a visit to the sun.  What wonders will they discover?  Will they make it back to Earth?  This wonderful adventure show is based on a story by award-winning children's author Kristyn Crow.

Meet the Whiskers, a family of endangered Australian sea lions.  Baby Otto has no one looking out for her, other than her mother.  Then again, maybe there is somebody else; Ranger Dirk Holman is charged with preserving this species along Australia's rugged southern coast.  This coming-of-age tale follows Otto and her mother as they struggle to survive, and follows Dirk as he travels to California to learn the secrets to the recovery of the California sea lion.  Will Dirk discover practices applicable to preserving the Australian sea lion?  Will Otto survive the harsh realities of life off the southern Australian coast?  Discover the answers in this film that is sure to engage your students.

Celeste is a curious young girl; she is especially enamored of the planets in the solar system.  Celeste is about to meet a new friend, Moon, who knows a lot about planets, not just those of the solar system, but about exoplanets; planets that orbit other stars.  We cannot see these planets, yet astronomers can detect their presence around stars and deduce a little about what they may be like.  How?  Well leave that up to Moon to explain.  The transit and radial velocity methods of detecting planets are explained along with how that information can tell us about the size and possible conditions on those planets.  Moon also happily explains what a planet must be like in order for it to have the possibility of life.

A live interactive presentation covering light pollution, locations of planetary systems, an in-depth explanation of transit and radial velocity detection methods, and a short tour of the current night sky follow the movie presentation.

The show (movie portion only) is also available in Spanish.  Request “Mas alla del Sol: En busca de una nueva Tierra.”

An educator's guide with classroom activities is available for this program upon request.

A magical expedition with a 24-year-old marine biologist, Anna Cresswell, reveals intimate secrets of one of the world's largest fringing coral reefs, stretching 260 km along the northwest coast of Western Australia and visible from space.  Travel in a two-person submarine, Odyssea, on an underwater adventure to explore an environment rich in coral, a highway for the planet's largest and smallest fish, including the whale shark.  This live action, fulldome film is an immersive voyage of discovery as we witness Ningaloo Reef and the rare natural wonder and spectacle of life – coral spawning.

Climate change is rapidly affecting our land, oceans, and atmosphere.  Extreme weather, driven by the changing climate, gives rise to powerful hurricanes, torrential downpours, and drought, resulting in natural disasters.  National Geographic brings you face to face with Mother Nature at her most dangerous in this film.  Experience the action as massive chunks of ice shear off a rapidly melting glacier in Alaska.  In the Midwest, cameras roll as storm chasers risk their lives to capture data as deadly tornadoes race toward them.  In drought-ravaged California, filmmakers embed themselves with firefighters trying to contain raging wildfires on the front lines.  The film unveils the surprising links between these three areas, demonstrating how small changes in one area can have major effects elsewhere.

Southern Idaho, a landscape sculpted by volcanic forces.  From the stark beauty of Craters of the Moon with its extinct spatter cones and plains of frozen lava to other lava flows across southern Idaho, it is clear that volcanoes played a role in shaping the land on which we live.  Today, active volcanoes hold an allure.  It could be from their rarity or the danger they pose.  Witness the incredible tale of the birth of our planet in which volcanoes played a crucial role.  Step into the present and follow along as National Geographic photographer Carsten Peter takes you along on a personal journey to see volcanoes from the inside, revealing their hidden mysteries.  Get up close to the 2018 eruption of Hawaii's Kilauea and watch as Carsten attempts to descend to a lava lake as it roils and churns, launching fountains of lava.  You may never want to get as close to an active volcano in real life as Carsten does, but you can go there with him from the safety of your seat in the planetarium.

Every rock tells a story.

Sometime in the future…

A time has come when humans have depleted our home planet's resources.  Multi-billionaire business tycoon Warren Trout, seeking to secure new frontiers for Trout Enterprises, recruits former Space Fleet Command pilot Jack Larsen for a mission to find a suitable extraterrestrial location for human colonization.  Now Jack finds himself searching the solar system, but he isn’t alone.  It seems that Trout’s precocious daughter, Ashley, has stowed away onboard his spaceship.  Together they embark upon a wild ride through the solar system trying to answer these questions: How are the worlds of the solar system alike?  How are they different?  What features must a world possess for humans to live there?

Will Larson and Ashley find a suitable location?  Will they even survive this mission?  Find out in this action-packed adventure.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens, and stories about the stars.

Life flourishes on Earth, begging the question of whether life might exist beyond our planet.  What are the essential elements of life, as we know it?   How did these elements come into existence?  What conditions are favorable to life?  Life's Question delves into these questions and others to explore not only the origins of life on Earth, but also the possibilities for finding life beyond our shores.  Discover the all-important six "CHNOPS" elements that comprise and drive terrestrial life.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

Teachers, one of the most popular questions we get is some variation on, "How was the Earth made?"  The concept of the Earth and the other planets forming from a huge cloud of gas and dust is a tough one for students to grasp.  This show does an incredible job of explaining and visualizing how the Earth was born.  Your students will see the solar nebula collapse and countless dust particles clumping together forming larger bodies, impacts of asteroid sized bodies forming protoplanets.  Observe the Earth-Theia collision resulting in the formation of the Moon.  Four and a half billion years of time roll by as the solar system, as we now know it, comes into being and your students gain an understanding of how our Earth formed.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

An educator's guide with classroom activities is available for this program upon request.

The impulse to strike out into the unknown, to see what is over the horizon, is as old as humanity.  Today, a new horizon beckons.  Scientists now believe solar systems fill our galaxy, including up to nine billion Sun-like stars with Earth-like planets.

Astronomers are racing to find habitable worlds, including any that might exist in the neighborhood of our Sun.  If we find one, how will we get there?  How long will it take?  What spacecraft designs might one day conquer the voids of space?

Take a virtual ride aboard spacecraft of the future, based on new technologies designed to achieve ultra-high speeds, using exotic fuels and breakthrough concepts in physics.  How far can our technology take us?

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens, and stories about the stars.

An educator's guide with classroom activities is available for this program upon request.

Few things appear more peaceful than a quiet, starry sky.  Year after year, the same stars return, apparently inhabiting a tranquil and unchanging universe.  Yet terrific, unseen forces shape the cosmos.  Galaxies collide; supernova explosions rip stars apart, blasting deadly gamma rays across space; black holes in the hearts of galaxies devour whole stars; asteroids and comets streak past, occasionally crashing into Earth and catastrophically disrupting its ecosystems.  In reality, the universe is a violent and dangerous place.  What dangers lurk out there, and how safe is our planet?

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

Join Raj and Sooki’s ex-CELL-ent adventure to explore the microscopic cells we're all made of.  Students will see the wonderous human cell from within, witnessing how the various organelles and cell structures function.  Genes and genetics are explained while examining egg fertilization, revealing how we acquire the individual DNA that makes us unique.  Also detailed is the process of cell specialization to create the diverse biological systems within us, and how those systems interact to allow us to accomplish amazing feats.

This program is followed by a live, interactive exploration of the discovery of the cell, prokaryotic vs. eukaryotic cells, numbers and types of human cells, apoptosis (cell &ldquot;suicide&rdquot;), the number and role of bacteria in humans, and other incredible and amazing facts about the cells of the human body.

Hints of its effects on the matter we can see have been around for a century, yet the true nature of dark matter continues to elude us.  Journey from mountaintop observatories to subterranean atom smashers and particle detectors with scientists hot on the trail of the invisible stuff that shapes galaxies.  Narrated by award-winning actress Tilda Swinton.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

Just over 400 years ago, using Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey's invention, Galileo started a revolution.  Turning his crude "spy glass" telescope skyward, he recorded the wonders he saw and changed the world forever.  Four centuries later the telescope has evolved into modern wonders of technology like the Hubble Space Telescope.  Join two young astronomy enthusiasts and their astronomer friend as they explore the universe and learn why telescopes are such important tools of science.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens, and stories about the stars.

Our star, the Sun, goes through an 11 year cycle, from a period of relative quiescence building to a period of substantial sunspot activity and eruptions of prominences across its surface.  During solar maximum, the Sun can discharge floods of charged particles into space by way of coronal mass ejections.  Most of these ejections never cross paths with our planet, but those that do can affect space weather around the globe and spawn beautiful displays of the aurora borealis.  While most geomagnetic storms are relatively harmless, occasionally the Sun spews forth a storm of particles so extreme it becomes a superstorm, with the potential to wreak havoc on our technologically dependent society.  Discover the nature of our star and the danger it can pose.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

There's a place from which nothing—not even light—escapes, where time and space literally come to their end.  It's here, inside this fantastic riddle, that black holes exert their sway over the cosmos…and our imaginations.  Zip through other-worldly wormholes, experience the creation of the Milky Way Galaxy, and witness the violent death of a star and subsequent birth of a black hole.  Mathematical equations, cutting-edge science, and Einstein's theories fill in holes along the way, providing the most complete picture yet of this mysterious phenomenon.  Can you feel the pull?

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.

The age-old mystery of the Star of Bethlehem is explored in this Christmas planetarium program.  Travel back in time to the Middle East and delve into the writings of the time, including scripture from the Bible, to search for clues to add to our modern scientific knowledge of the nature of the heavens above to see if there might be some natural explanation the star's appearance.  Can the star be understood scientifically, or is its explanation only to be found in realm of the miraculous?

Note: This program has strong religious content.

A live sky tour follows the program, featuring constellations, planets, the moon and other items of interest currently visible in the sky, with tips for finding your way around in the heavens on the next clear night, and stories about the stars.