Late Light
The last show starts after dark. Lean back, and the scroll carries you off the hill and out past the Moon, Jupiter, the nearest star, the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and the oldest light there is.
Take a seatThe Moon, exactly as it is tonight.
Drawn from today's date. This is the phase over the dome when the show lets out, and its light is just over a second old.
- Distance
- 384,400 km
- Light age
- 1.3 seconds
- Tonight
- Moon tonight
Jupiter, with a storm you could lose the Earth in.
Eleven Earths across, striped by wind, with four big moons strung out beside it. The red spot has been watched since 1831.
- Distance
- about 780 million km
- Light age
- 43 minutes
- Width
- 11 Earths
The nearest star after the Sun, and it is red.
A dwarf with an eighth of the Sun's mass, too faint to see without a telescope. Its light left four years and three months ago.
- Distance
- 4.24 light years
- Light age
- 4 years 3 months
- Mass
- 12% of the Sun's
The black hole at the centre of everything you know.
Four million Suns in a point you cannot see. What glows is the gas falling in. This light left during the last ice age.
- Distance
- 26,000 light years
- Light age
- 26,000 years
- Mass
- 4 million Suns
Then the oldest light there is, still arriving.
It set out 13.8 billion years ago, before there were stars, and it still falls on the dome every night: faint, everywhere, 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.
- Light age
- 13.8 billion years
- Temperature
- 2.7 K
- The edge we can see
- 46 billion light years