The planetarium, after hours
Late Light
A late-night show under the dome. The lights go down, the doors close, and for one hour the ceiling is the only sky there is.
Scroll to leave Earth
First stop
The Moon
1.3 light-seconds from the dome
Moonlight is a little over a second old when it reaches your eye. It is the only other world anyone has stood on, and from here the whole of the night show begins.
Second stop
Mars
Between 3 and 22 light-minutes, depending on the year
A rust-coloured world with a day almost as long as ours and a sky that goes pink at sunset. We dim the dome to the brightness of a Martian afternoon so your eyes can adjust.
Third stop
Jupiter
About 43 light-minutes
Large enough to hold every other planet put together, with a storm older than the telescope that first saw it. On the full dome it fills the ceiling from wall to wall.
Fourth stop
Saturn
About 80 light-minutes
The rings are mostly ice, thinner in proportion than a sheet of paper, and wide enough that light takes a while to cross them. This is the part of the show where nobody talks.
Fifth stop
Look back
Roughly one light-day
From the edge of the Sun's reach, Earth is a single pale point caught in a sunbeam. The dome, the seats, everyone who ever sat in them: all inside that point. We hold this frame for a long time.
Sixth stop
A nursery of stars
About 1,300 light-years
The Orion Nebula, visible from the dome's roof as a smudge below the belt. New stars are lighting inside it now. The light leaving them tonight will reach the planetarium in the thirty-fourth century.
Last stop
Another galaxy
2.5 million light-years
Andromeda: the farthest thing a human eye can see unaided, and the oldest light in the show. It left before anyone was here to look up. It arrives tonight, in a dark room, on purpose.
Then the lights come up
Welcome back to the dome
You travelled two and a half million light-years and never left your seat. That is the whole trick of a planetarium, and it is the whole of Late Light.
- What it is
- One hour under the full dome, narrated live, taking the route you just scrolled.
- When
- Late nights, after the last daytime show. The doors close when the lights go down; late arrivals wait for the next trip.
- Bring
- Nothing. Leave the phone in your pocket for an hour; the sky is brighter without it.
Seats are reserved at the planetarium's box office.