Mari Kubota – Looking Outwards – 01

The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City is run using a software the museum developed over almost 20 years called the Digital Universe Atlas. The Digital Universe Atlas was created with the collaboration of a Swedish Company, SCISS, who developed a similar software called Uniview. The software was programmed using the Partiview data visualization engine designed by Stuart Levy. Using data from national and international organizations, the Digital Universe visually conveys information about Earth, every known star, satellite, and planet all the way to the known universe to scale.

This allows the user to understand the astronomical distance and scale of the universe and everything inside it. Though the software is mainly used for planetariums for show, you can also download the software and navigate through the solar system, the milky-way galaxy, and the constellations yourself. This interactive and educational software brings the universe into perspective and where we stand in the universe.