Latest news with #CarterEmmart
New York Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Traveling the Cosmos With Carter Emmart, One Last Time
The starship on West 81st Street and Central Park West is losing its captain. For nearly three decades, Carter Emmart, 64, has been director of astro-visualization at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium, curating the ultimate diorama: a digital universe of data and images culled from space probes and telescopes the world over. Mr. Emmart and his crew have created a series of mesmerizing planetarium shows over the years that take audiences forward and backward in time and space to understand the origin and potential fate of the cosmos. With shoulder-length hair, beads, bracelets and a propensity to show up for big events in a blue astronaut jumpsuit, Mr. Emmart himself seems to have been beamed in from somewhere Out There. His Manhattan office is festooned with a collection of Barbies, dolls he has used in design models, which he has lugged to all corners of the world, having dressed them in regional costumes. To date, millions of planetarium visitors have watched and heard stars explode; galaxies collide; clouds of interstellar space dust glow, swirl and melt. They have zoomed over alien landscapes and pierced the mysterious dark matter that permeates space. The shows have been narrated by celebrities such as Tom Hanks, Robert Redford, Whoopi Goldberg and the museum's own impresario of the sky, Neil deGrasse Tyson. The shows have been distributed to 60 different institutions in 40 countries. A very lucky viewer could lie on the floor of the planetarium on a recent slow afternoon as Mr. Emmart led a personal tour of his digital universe, pausing to appreciate craters on the moon and the dunes of Mars. Mr. Emmart's final show, 'Encounters in the Milky Way,' which opened on June 9, traces the history and future of our own galaxy. At the end of the summer, Mr. Emmart plans to retire to Thailand. 'I'm looking forward to being in nature with the peace and quiet,' he said recently. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Time Out
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
A new space show narrated by actor Pedro Pascal will debut at the American Museum of Natural History this summer
Pedro Pascal is headed to space—sort of. The beloved actor will lend his voice to "Encounters in the Milky Way," the brand-new Hayden Planetarium Space Show opening at the American Museum of Natural History on June 9, 2025. The show marks the seventh installment in the museum's storied Space Show series and celebrates the 25th anniversary of the iconic Rose Center for Earth and Space. Using jaw-dropping visualizations based on real data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission (which has mapped nearly two billion stars), 'Encounters in the Milky Way' takes viewers on a cosmic joyride through billions of years of galactic motion. It's the first Hayden Space Show to explore how the Milky Way's dynamic dance affects our solar system's past—and its wild future. Audiences will watch our Sun's birth possibly triggered by the Milky Way's clash with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, see our system drift into a supernova-cleared 'local bubble' around the time humans first stood upright and fast-forward to the future, when a rogue star named Gliese 710 barrels through the Oort cloud, messing with comets like it owns the place. Directed by Carter Emmart and produced by the museum's award-winning science visualization team, the program also spotlights cutting-edge tools like the James Webb Space Telescope and features a brand-new immersive audio system for maximum galactic drama. Previous Space Shows have featured narrators such as Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg and Neil deGrasse Tyson, but this one might be the most action-packed yet. Whether you're a space buff, a Pascal stan or just want to kick back and stargaze without leaving the planet, this one's worth orbiting your summer plans around.
