We live out our lives on our planet’s fractured crust, “plates” that pull apart, collide, grind past each other, and even sink below one another, producing violent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and catastrophic walls of water known as tsunamis. A full dome presentation about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, earth, geology, and continental drift.

Solar Quest is a planetarium short feature that demonstrates and provides an overview of the Sun – Earth environment.  Detailed and high quality animations and videos demonstrate various solar phenomena such as fusion, light energy and solar surface features and phenomena.  The show also discusses the impacts that space weather may have and how the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protects all life on Earth.  Highlighted in the show is the role of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and how scientists have begun to use it as a way to help identify and predict severe space weather. 

Fly along the San Andreas Fault before diving into the planet’s interior, travel back in time to witness the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the break-up of Pangaea 200 million years ago, visit the sites of historical earthquakes in India, China and Japan, and learn how scientists and engineers collaborate to build a safer environment. Along the way, you’ll discover how earthquakes fit into the larger story of our restless planet. 

The scene was 74,000 years ago, on the island of Sumatra. A volcanic eruption triggered the sudden and violent collapse of a vast regional plateau. Toba, as the volcano is known today, was the largest volcanic eruption in the last 25 million years. But Earth has seen far larger. 250 million years ago, an eruption in what’s now Siberia lasted a million years and was probably responsible for the greatest episode of mass extinction in Earth’s history.

Super volcanoes is an immersive planetarium show that looks back at rare classes of eruptions that have marshaled the energy that lurks, like a sleeping dragon, beneath the surface of planet Earth. The program moves beyond Earth to explore the impact of giant volcanic eruptions around our solar system. Audiences will fly down to Neptune’s frigid moon Triton, and onto the ultimate volcanic world: Jupiter’s moon Io. On a visit to a legendary North American hot spot, Yellowstone National Park, the film asks: can a super volcano erupt in our time?