Hayden Planetarium

Hayden Planetarium is a public planetarium located on Central Park West, New York City, next to and organizationally part of the American Museum of Natural History.

Since February 2000, the planetarium has been one of the two main attractions within the Rose Center for Earth and Space. The top half of the Hayden Sphere houses the Star Theater, which uses high-resolution fulldome video to project “space shows” based in scientific visualization of current astrophysical data, in addition to a customized Zeiss Star Projector system relicating an accurate night sky as seen from Earth. The bottom half of the Sphere is home to the Big Bang Theater, which depicts the birth of the universe in a four-minute program. As visitors leave the Planetarium theater, they exit to the Size Scales of the Universe exhibit which shows the vast array of sizes in the universe. This exhibit leads to the Big Bang Theater and exits to the Cosmic Pathway, which shows the history of the universe. From the bottom of the Cosmic Pathway, visitors can stop by the Hall of Planet Earth to explore geology, weather, plate tectonics and more, or go down to the Hall of the Universe to explore the realms of planets, stars, galaxies and more.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the planetarium’s director.

The Hayden Planetarium offers a number of courses and public presentations including the Frontiers of Astrophysics and Distinguished Authors lecture series.

History1935 The Hayden Planetarium, designed by architects Trowbridge & Livingston, opens, after its construction is funded by a $650,000 loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and a $150,000 donation from Charles Hayden. Its mission was to give the public:
a more lively and sincere appreciation of the magnitude of the universe… and for the wonderful things which are daily occurring in the universe.
1960 A Zeiss Mark IV projector is installed.
1973 A Zeiss Mark VI projector and new seats are installed.
1979 The planetarium appears as a backdrop for scenes in the film Manhattan. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton play characters who walk around within the planetarium after escaping from a sudden downburst of rain.
1997 The original Hayden Planetarium is closed in January.
1999 A new, customized Zeiss Mark IX projector is installed in August. It is accompanied by a digital dome projection system that provides a 3-D visualization of the universe based on images generated in real time by a Silicon Graphics supercomputer.
2000 On February 19th, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, designed by James Polshek and containing the new Hayden Planetarium, opens to the public.

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