Written by Ashley Zalta, HMNS Special Events Manager The Burke Baker Planetarium at The Houston Museum of Natural Science has been recently renovated, and is now the premiere planetarium in the galaxy. It’s the first and only True8K™ planetarium, offering an unprecedented 50,000,000 pixels of beautiful brightness, resolution and brilliance. We wanted to show off […]
Jupiter is now high in the east-southeast at dusk. It outshines all stars we ever see at night, so you can’t miss it. Mercury is visible just after sunset this month. Face west at twilight, and look low in the sky over the point where the sun sets. Mercury isn’t as brilliant as Venus or […]
It only takes a few seconds of a stellar light show in this newly-renovated facility to recognize why the Houston Museum of Natural Science is calling the Burke Baker Planetarium “the best and brightest in the world.” The clarity, the detail, the movement, the science, the imagery, all come together to create one of the […]
Jupiter comes to opposition on March 8, which is when Earth aligns with Jupiter and the Sun. That is why Jupiter is up all night long in early March. Face east in evening twilight to watch Jupiter rise. It outshines all stars we ever see at night, so you can’t miss it. Early risers will […]
The Burke Baker Planetarium and Friedkin Theater renovation project reached a milestone this week, and we at the museum are brimming with anticipation! Okay. That’s an understatement. When we first heard the news, we all ran around screaming, “The dome is finished! The dome is finished!” That’s what really happened. The dome is indeed complete, […]
In July of 1964, the Houston Museum of Natural Science opened its new museum in Hermann Park with modest exhibit space and the Burke Baker Planetarium. A state-of-the-art Spitz Space Transit Planetarium dominated the theater’s center with its flat floor and a few slide projectors. Two star balls connected by cages, swinging in a yoke, […]
Venus is in the southeast at dawn, approaching Saturn. Venus passes Saturn the morning of January 9; the two planets are less than one tenth of one degree apart! They’re easy to tell apart, as Venus outshines all the stars we see at night and is almost 100 times brighter than Saturn. Mars is now […]
Saturn sets in twilight for the first week of November and is lost in the sun’s glare the rest of the month. Venus, Mars and Jupiter are still close together in the morning sky this month. Right now, Venus is close to Mars, with Jupiter above them. Venus and Mars are 0.68 degrees apart the morning […]
This is the last month to observe the two brightest planets in the western evening sky. On June 30, Venus overtook Jupiter. This month, watch Venus shift to the left of Jupiter each evening at dusk. Meanwhile, both planets appear lower and lower to the horizon each night, until they are both lost in the […]
April 25 will mark the 25th anniversary of the world-famous Hubble Space Telescope, and the George Observatory will celebrate with a debut of their restored 36-inch Gueymard Research Telescope, the largest specialized Cassegrain telescope open to the public, and the only one that chooses to use an eyepiece. “You can see the images with your own […]
