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Celebrate the arrival of 2024 at the Southworth Planetarium!
Watch some or all of our new and most popular programs on the same night.
At the end of the evening, we’ll watch the Times Square Ball Drop on our dome.

Admission by donation

**Doors open at 6:30 p.m.**

 

**Show schedule:**

**7:00 p.m. Destination Solar System**

Hop aboard the Space Express in the year 2096 to explore the Sun, moon and major planets.  Join Jesse, your highly enthusiastic tour guide and Max, the omni-competent on-board computer, on an odyssey around our dynamic solar system.    See solar flares, Martian canyons, exotic outer worlds moons and even glide through Saturn’s magnificent ring system.

**7:45 p.m.  Totality!**

Prepare for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse! How do such eclipses happen? Why are they so rare? What will we see? This show delves into the dynamics of solar eclipses. Before you venture out to observe the April 2024 total solar eclipse, see “Totality!”

**8:20 p.m. Hubble Vision**

Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has provided incredible images in unprecedented detail to astronomers, and made an astonishing array of discoveries — from nearby objects in the solar system to the most distant galaxies at limits of the observable universe. We’ve taken the best and most exciting Hubble images and woven them into an engaging story of cosmic exploration, bringing the wonders of the universe to audiences everywhere. HUBBLE Vision 2 is a fascinating tour of the cosmos — from Earth orbit.

**9:00 p.m. Dinosaurs at Dusk**

A whirlwind time travel adventure back to the epoch of the dinosaurs! We have to tell you that we’ve been waiting eons to announce that we have a full dome, computer animated dinosaurs show! A larger than life extravaganza rife with roaring monsters from the ancient age: bounding, stomping, flying, hunting, and foraging frenetically above us. Propel yourself back through the epochs to explore an Earth teeming with Pteradons, Triceratrops and, of course, the ferocious and therefore wonderfully marketable T-Rex And, if we can say so, this is NOT your great great great grandfather’s dinosaur show with slides and lethargic Sunday afternoon nature special narration. Instead, we’re embarking on a causality violating adventure through time to discover a planet dominated by the largest land animals that ever set claw to topsoil.  Come back to the Southworth Planetarium and then venture back to the Mesozoic era for a personal odyssey through the realm of the dinosaurs.

**9:45 p.m.  Night Sky Tour**

**10:00 p.m. Season of Light**

We are delighted to announce that the “Season of Light” holiday program is returning to the Southworth Planetarium in full dome format.      NPR’S Noah Adams narrates this omni-dome planetarium program about the history and astronomy of the holiday season.  What are the origins of the solstice festivals and Santa Claus?   Why do we celebrate New Year’s Day on January 1st?   What is the history of Hannukkah?    “Season of Light” explores the rich and beautiful history of our holiday traditions.  Toward the end of the show, we focus on the Star of Bethlehem.   If it were a natural occurrence, what could it have been?  An exploding star?  A conjunction of planets?   Perhaps a comet or some other celestial object.

**10:30 p.m. Living Worlds**

Earth is a planet shaped by life. From the forests that help stabilize our climate, to the winds carrying life-sustaining water and oxygen to far-flung parts of the globe, the fingerprints of life are visible even from many light-years away Living Worlds, an original planetarium show from the California Academy of Sciences, invites you to journey through space and time to examine life as an essential quality of our home planet. The show takes you on an exploration of the co-evolution of life and our planet, revealing the ways in which life has transformed Earth’s surface and atmosphere over billions of years. Along the way, you’ll see how light and color can help us spot a living world, even from great distances. As we ponder what forms life might take in the Solar System and beyond, Living Worlds encourages us to consider how a deeper understanding of our own planet can aid in the search for life across the cosmos, and to reflect on ways we can partner with our living world to ensure our continued survival

**11:00 p.m. Exoplanets: Discovering New Worlds**

This exciting new show describes how astronomers search for planets circling other stars. It explains the two main methods they use: studying the minute “wobbles” of stars and detecting flickers in a star’s brightness. Only a few Earth-like planets have been found, and as of yet, no extraterrestrial life has been found on any of the worlds discovered so far. Yet, it’s likely to be only a matter of time before a world teeming with life shows up in astronomy surveys of stars in our galactic neighborhood.

Right now, we know of only one world where life exists: ours! But it is likely there are other places in the galaxy where life has evolved and thrived. What if that life is intelligent? Has it tried to contact us? This show speculates on the possibility of such life, and points out nearby civilizations may already know about us — from our radio and TV broadcast signals

**11:30 p.m. Aurora Storm**

An 11-minute show about the science and mythology of the northern lights.

**11:45 p.m. Night Sky Tour**

**11:55 p.m. Watch the Ball Drop at Times Square**

New Year’s Planetarium!

University of Southern Maine

New Year’s Planetarium!

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