THE ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH AND SPACE, HOME OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY'S HAYDEN PLANETARIUM, celebrated its 10th birthday on 10.10.10. Beginning at 10am, the center was a flurry of birthday activities. In addition to numerous activity stations including make-your-own planet and toy rocket, this grand birthday bash included cake, cookies, live music, planetarium shows, and special speakers.
I finally meet Dr. Tyson. So exciting!
I was especially excited to attend because of two speakers in particular: Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom I recently interviewed via Skype, and astronaut Mike Massimino. Dr. Tyson was as enjoyable as always to watch answer questions from adults and many children who were in attendance. When the controversial subject of Pluto came up (you know it's no longer classified as a planet, right?) a few children in the audience yelled their discontent at Dr. Tyson, who spearheaded the change to the center's exhibits in regards to this reclassification. It was pretty exciting. And hilarious. Dr. Tyson also discusses everything from the architecture of the Hayden Planetarium to the exhibit design to introducing associate curator Ben R. Oppenheimer and his Known Universe video. Here is some footage of Dr. Tyson speaking at the Rose Center birthday celebration:
Watch The Known Universe, a "six-minute journey from Earth to the edge of observable space and back, has surpassed five million views on YouTube since the American Museum of Natural History released the video in December 2009."
See the winning video for the contest Mr. Tyson mentions, in which participants were to describe in no more than two minutes "How Science Has Inspired You." Watch the two runners-up entries here as well. Be sure to follow the American Museum of Natural History on Twitter and check out their fun apps.
LATER, ASTRONAUT AND FRANKLIN SQUARE, NEW YORK NATIVE MIKE MASSIMINO took to the stage to talk about his experiences in space. What makes Mr. Massimino such an exciting speaker is his recounting of the physical act of getting to outer-space."You go from zero to 17,500 miles per hour in eight-and-a-half minutes," Massimino said. "So the only way I can describe this is, what was going through my mind was I had felt like some beast had grabbed me, like something out of one of these science fiction movies had grabbed me by the chest and was taking me away from home really fast and there was nothing I could do about it. The feeling of power and speed was overwhelming...it was a lot of fun actually..." He also shared a few stories of his time spent in space. It's his heartfelt descriptions of being in space -- like his story of experiencing night and day without the protective shield of Earth's atmosphere -- that are particularly exciting to hear. The following are clips from his presentation at the Rose Center on October 10, 2010:
I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Massimino, and the experience was positively overwhelming. Astronauts are rare in this world and to actually shake the hand of someone who was in space -- who has logged 571 hours and 47 minutes in space and 30 hours and 4 minutes of spacewalking -- well, it just got the best of me. I just was never sure I'd ever have the opportunity to meet an astronaut. I had to dab my eyes for a while afterward.
Me and astronaut Mike Massimino.
If you are ever curious to know how many people are in space at any given moment, How Many People Are In Space Right Now is the perfect website. I highly recommend checking out nasa.gov, NASA TV, NASA's YouTube page (watching researchers make fake vomit is pretty funny), and following NASA on Twitter.
Video of Massimino returning an item to curator Ben Oppenheimer:
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