The planetarium's late-night show
Late Light
Every star you will see tonight is old news. Its light set out long before you sat down, and some of it set out before there was anyone to sit. Scroll, and we will go out to meet it.
Scroll to leave Earth01 The Moon
1.3 seconds ago
The nearest thing in the sky, and even it is a little late. The moonlight on your hand tonight left the Moon while you were reading this sentence. It is the freshest light you will ever see from anywhere but here.
02 Mars
13 minutes ago, give or take
Mars swings from three light-minutes away to twenty-two as the two orbits wheel past each other. Its sunsets are blue: the dust steals the red out of the sky and leaves the rest, the opposite of ours. We will stand on it for a while.
03 Saturn
80 minutes ago
The rings are water ice, almost pure, from snowflakes up to houses. Edge to edge they reach most of the way from the Earth to the Moon, and in places they are only tens of metres thick. We will fly straight through the gap.
04 Voyager 1
Almost a day ago
The farthest thing we have ever made. It left in 1977 with a gold record of greetings and still calls home on a transmitter weaker than a fridge bulb. Say hello to it tonight and the answer takes nearly two days to come back.
05 Proxima Centauri
4.2 years ago
The nearest star after the Sun. A small red one, cooler than a welding torch, with at least one planet that would fit in your hand if you could hold a planet. If it went out tonight, no one on Earth would know until the start of the 2030s.
06 The Orion Nebula
1,300 years ago
A nursery. Stars are being born in here right now, out of gas that glows because the newest ones are so hot. The light arriving tonight left in the early Middle Ages; whatever has switched on since, we will not hear about it for another thirteen centuries.
07 Andromeda
2.5 million years ago
The farthest thing you can see with your own eyes, a smudge above the autumn horizon that is a trillion suns. This light set out before anyone on Earth could look up. It is the oldest thing you will ever look at, and it is falling toward us.
08 Home
Then we bring you back
Late Light runs after the last daytime show, when the building is dark and most of the city is too. The seats go flat. The dome goes darker than any sky you have stood under, and then, one by one, it fills with light that has been on its way for longer than you have been alive.
- WhenAfter the last daytime show, one night at a time
- WhereUnder the dome at the planetarium
- BringNothing. Your eyes take a few minutes to open up; we wait for them