Today, June 14, is Flag Day and here at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum we are home to a very special flag, donated to us by Congressman Richard H. Baker on April 22, 2002, to memorialize the events surrounding the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Because of its detailed ring system, Saturn is known as the “jewel of the solar system.” Saturn’s rings stretch from edge-to-edge as wide as 175,000 miles, about the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Even though the other gas planets in our solar system have a series of rings, Saturn’s system of rings is the most prominent and well known. However, a new exoplanet–some 420 light years from Earth–has been discovered with a ring system that dwarfs any ring system ever before seen; it is a ring system over 200 times larger than the rings of Saturn.
Dr. Carter Emmart, Producer of Dark Universe and director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space, will present a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the most accurate three-dimensional mapping data of the universe was used to create the show’s beautiful visual effects.
Irene W. Pennington Planetarium 