School Groups

The show is followed by a tour of the current night sky.

Connections highlights many educational standards. The focus being on how all things are connected. We learn by our senses to see that a forest, a field, or deep space are all three-dimensional and that we can move about to gain an understanding of our place in the cosmos. Students will realize that all things cast shadows and that day and night are determined if the sun is shining above or is behind a planet respectively. Our movement on land, an animal’s motion in a forest, or a planet’s rotation and revolution are all different examples of how things move. Part of our connection with the night sky is through the history of observations and mythology. Ancient constellations and modern line drawings are shown to illustrate our human ancestry and the fun of getting out under your own night sky.

Note, for Pre-K, the entire program will be about 30 minutes consisting of just the “Connections” program.

This is another fantastic in-house Bays Mountain Production that is perfect for 2nd grade and above. It follows state curriculum guidelines as it looks at the big ideas that have guided human understanding of the cosmos and its patterns in the sky.

This program begins with a view of our current nighttime sky where we point out constellations, asterisms, planets and the Milky Way. We then embark on an exciting tour of the Solar System which highlights the regions within and learn what is and is not a planet. Zoom through space to visit each planet and get really close to see details in a stunning 3-D environment.

We are also incorporating two live sequences to enhance the learning and fun. The first will be an activity to involve and engage the audience to learn more about the parts of a comet, the path a comet takes, and the dust and ion tails that splay out in their correct directions as the comet orbits the sun. The second sequence will use a facility’s star projection system and focus on any upcoming comets to see in the sky and how to view them.

The show is immediately followed by a two-part live presentation. The first highlights the moon and its major features. The second utilizes our Carl Zeiss ZKP-4 star projector in which we’ll highlight our current night sky and its major constellations and any Solar System objects visible.

Join comet discoverer Klim Churyumov in the story about the origins of the Solar System and life on Earth. Meet the challenges of a 10 year long mission with “Rosetta” spacecraft and the “Philae” lander. Become the first one to find oneself on the comet surface!

The show includes updates on the mission and what we have learned.

Our production includes a variety of wonderful styles – from spectacular space environments to humorous pop-up books. A very special part of the show relates, in a very human way, what happens when you are caught in the shadow of the Moon and the Sun is plunged into a total solar eclipse. You will love this program.

Students will learn how special equipment was designed and used to gain an understanding of our cosmos. Observational skills is most necessary when using a telescope. Logic, too, is important to understand what you are observing and to not confuse illusion with fact. The telescope showed us not only details of celestial objects, but allowed us to realize that we are not the center of the Solar System by specific changing appearances of the planets.

Another great production by Bays Mountain! You’ll follow Skye Watcher, a fun, street-savvy 1940’s-style detective and learn, most clearly, what we now call a planet.
This is a very topical subject in your educational curriculum.

When we look up at the night sky, we can see that stars vary in brightness and have many different colors. The program reveals what is similar to all stars and what makes them unique. In “Discover the Stars,” we explore the many facets of a stars’ life. One of which is to venture deep into a giant molecular cloud to witness the birth of a new star. Stars also do not last forever. The program looks at the different ways that stars end their lives and the astronomical wonders that are left behind.

For thousands of years, mankind thought that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Thanks to our curiosity, imagination and urge to explore, we now know that planets like our Earth are nothing special in the cosmos. The Sun is just one ordinary star among hundreds of billions in our galaxy, the Milky Way. With the world’s most powerful telescopes, we are able to explore more and more of the Universe. What we have found so far has surpassed even the wildest expectations of scientists as well as authors of science fiction. Most stars have planets — it turns out they are more common than we thought.
A huge diversity of different worlds is out there, just waiting to be discovered.

SEEING! – A Photon’s Journey Across Space, Time and Mind
Funded through a generous grant by Zeiss, “SEEING!” brings the story of sight and vision to planetariums worldwide. Produced by Mirage3D and Koenig Films, “SEEING!” follows a photon’s creation and journey across the galaxy to a young stargazer’s eye. The viewer follows the photon into the girl’s eye, learning the structures of the eye and their functions, prior to taking a ride on the optic nerve. “Seeing!” was directed by Robin Sip, written by Emmy Award© winning writer Kris Koenig and narrated by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science communicator and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City.

Bays Mountain Planetarium is proud to present “The Transit of Mercury featuring ‘Solar Quest.’” In this live and interactive program, visitors will explore the small, rocky world of Mercury from its rare glimpses in the twilight skies to recent explorations by the Messenger spacecraft. The powerful nature of our Sun is presented through a short segment entitled “Solar Quest,” which was produced by the Buhl Planetarium at Carnegie Science Center. A live activity demonstrating the relative sizes and distances of Mercury, Earth and Sun highlights why transit events are somewhat rare occurrences. The program concludes with information about how to observe this event safely.

“The Transit of Mercury featuring ‘Solar Quest’” was written and produced by Bays Mountain Planetarian, Jason Dorfman. The live content is rich with great full-dome animations, use of the Carl Zeiss ZKP-4 star projector, and a fun activity!

A Venus transit is when the planet Venus is seen passing in front of the sun. Why so special? Telescope technology in the 18th century allowed the first opportunity for astronomers to accurately determine the size of the Solar System. Another reason for being special is that these transits are rare. Two consecutive transits occur eight years apart. But, these pairs are separated by 105.5 and 121.5 years alternatively. The last two transits occurred in 2004 and 2012. Diehard optimists will just have to wait about 100 years for the next pair!

The show’s second feature is a live presentation utilizing some of the wonderful capabilities of our Carl Zeiss ZKP-4 star projector as well as our digital projection system. We’ll highlight our current night sky, but relate it to our show’s topic. Learn about some other celestial delights found within our galaxy. We conclude our program by transforming our position on earth and travel down to the southern hemisphere and spy the two largest dwarf galaxies that orbit us, the Magellanic Clouds.

In this program, stunning views of the most extreme places in our universe, the galaxies around us, and the Earth and the Sun await. They are just a prelude to a thrilling journey inside the detector, looking for traces of neutrinos from when they collide with atoms in the ice. From one of the most remote locations on Earth to the unexplored regions of the cosmos, “Chasing the Ghost Particle: From the South Pole to the Edge of the Universe” will take you on a journey you will never forget.

Chasing the Ghost Particle is a co-production of the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The program is immediately followed by the use of our Carl Zeiss ZKP-4 optical star projector with a tour of our current night sky and a look at the southern celestial skies of Antarctica.

Directed by the young Greek filmmaker Theofanis N. Matsopoulos, and featuring a sweeping soundtrack from Norwegian composer Johan B. Monell, viewers can revel in the splendour of the various worlds in the Solar System and the ferocity of the scorching Sun. From Earth to the Universe then leaves our home to take the audience out to the colourful birthplaces and burial grounds of stars, and still further out, beyond the Milky Way, to the unimaginable immensity of a myriad galaxies. Along the way, the audience will learn about the history of astronomy, the invention of the telescope, and today’s giant telescopes that allow us continue to probe ever deeper into the Universe.

Director Theofanis N. Matsopoulos described the film as “a colourful and inspiring journey… the visuals are stunning and really speak for themselves in showing just how far humanity’s ambition has taken us in terms of observing and understanding the Universe”.

The show is presented by Dr Alan Duffy, a brilliant young astronomer from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at the University of Western Australia – who creates simulations of Dark Matter evolution inside supercomputers. Alan introduces us to the idea of Dark Matter, why astronomers think it exists, and explains why Radio Astronomy is so well-suited to its discovery.

We journey through completely immersive visualisations of Dark Matter evolution calculated upon some of the world’s fastest supercomputers – cosmological visions on a truly vast scale, in which galaxies themselves are but points of light, distributed across far larger intergalactic structures of Dark Matter.