Extrasolar Planets – discovering new worlds

A New Show for the Loch Ness Productions Catalog

Did you know that one in five stars in our galaxy probably has a planet up to two times the size of Earth in its habitable zone? The search for these and other kinds of extrasolar planets is uncovering many worlds beyond our own solar system. What are these places like? Are any of them habitable worlds like Earth? If life developed on our planet, could it arise elsewhere? How can we find those other planets?

These are the questions that led the team at Albedo Fulldome to create Extrasolar Planets—discovering new worlds, in cooperation with the Planetarium of the Science Museum “La Caixa”. They wanted to create a show that explains exoplanets in a simple and engaging manner.

Exoplanets—worlds orbiting other stars—have been in the news a lot lately. The Kepler spacecraft alone has discovered more than 4,000 planet “candidates”, and more than 160 have been confirmed as planets. Astronomers have at least a year’s worth of data from the Kepler mission to analyze, and expect to confirm the existence of many more planets. With all these discoveries in the news, it’s a good time to announce a new show about exoplanets from our friends at Albedo Fulldome Productions.

Extrasolar Planets—discovering new worlds begins with a look at the planets we know about: the worlds of our solar system. It then turns our attention to how astronomers find planets around other stars in our region of the galaxy. The multi-year explorations done by the Kepler and COROT spacecraft contributed a treasure trove of planet-hunting data. Follow-up observations are rapidly confirming the existence of smaller and smaller planets, some of them even smaller than Earth!  At the rate exoplanet discoveries are happening, detecting alien life on some of them may no longer be the stuff of science fiction!

The Holy Grail of exoplanet discovery is to find a planet teeming with life, and maybe even life forms that can communicate with us. Fulldome theaters everywhere can now take audiences on a journey of deep space exploration to these alien extrasolar planets—to discover for themselves how astronomers find these new worlds and what these planets might be like.

Loch Ness Productions is pleased to add this informative new show to our distribution catalog of fulldome offerings. Read more, watch the trailer in HD, see full-length previews, and order online at http://www.lochnessproductions.com/shows/antares/epd.html. Begin your own planetary search, today!