Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures

Piecing Together Mars: Understanding a Sister World

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Visualization of light sulphate mountains in the Ganges Chasma region of Mars, based on real data (no height exaggeration).

Imagine flying over the surface of Mars! This visualization from NASA data shows mountains in Ganges Chasma.

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Members: $12 General: $15 Seniors: $12

Seating is limited and advance reservations required. To order by phone, call (877) 227-1831.

Member Tickets | $12

Piecing Together Mars: From Discovery and Surprise Toward Understanding a Sister World
Monday, June 25, 7:30 pm
Morrison Planetarium

Featuring Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization, American Museum of Natural History and Jeff Moore, Planetary Geologist, NASA-Ames Research Center

From ancient times through the telescopic era, the blood red planet Mars puzzled observers with its color, its seasonal features, and its variability—even inspiring the idea that alien engineers shaped its surface! Spacecraft revealed a more sober reality. An ancient cratered surface looked more like the Moon than Earth, colored red as rust, weathered and cut by fluvial channels and giant floods which flowed around the same time that only early bacteria ruled our planet. But Mars possesses some of the most dramatic landscapes in the Solar System with the largest volcanoes and canyons known.

Join us on an authentic visual journey across the surface of Mars—based on real data as transmitted back by our instruments there and reconstructed on the dome of Morrison Planetarium. What you’ll see is real, in perspectives never before seen on Earth.

Carter Emmart and Jeff Moore

Carter Emmart (left) is the Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He coordinates scientists, programmers and artists to produce scientifically accurate yet visually stunning and immersive space experiences in the AMNH’s cutting-edge Hayden Planetarium. Over the last ten years, he has directed four shows: Passport to the Universe, The Search for Life: Are we Alone?, Cosmic Collisions, and Journey to the Stars.

Jeff Moore (right) is a Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. His extensive space mission experience includes, the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) as Science Team member/Long Term Planning Lead, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as HiRISE Science Team collaborator, the Galileo Mission as Solid State Imaging Team Associate, Participating Scientist for the Mars Polar Lander, and Co-Investigator and Imaging Node Leader for the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

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