Explore

Explore is a compelling story of skygazing, scientific discovery, and the wonders of exploration: past, present, and future.

Humanity has always had a fascination with the stars — from ancient stargazers and astrologers to modern-day astronauts and astronomers. Explore is a compelling story of skygazing, scientific discovery, and the wonders of exploration: past, present, and future.

This show begins with a look at how scholars and scientists throughout the ages used the sky as a calendar and clock to measure the passage of time. Their charts and star catalogs informed the breakthrough discoveries of Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, who in turn paved the way for space travel. In several beautiful scenes, the show demonstrates how today’s spacecrafts follow Kepler’s laws in stately maneuvers as they make their way from Earth to orbit and then — one day — on to other worlds.

Following the fulldome show, our Planetarium Educator will spacewalk you through some of the most exciting crewed missions. Program length is one hour.

Program length is one hour.

Please arrive at least 5 minutes before show time, because late arrivals may not be seated for safety reasons in our darkened planetarium.

If you are not already familiar with the location of the planetarium, please be sure to understand our location using the map here on Eventbrite or here: Planetarium location in Google Maps For our public programs, you will be able to park in the I-37 parking lot off of Iroquois Drive directly next to Buffalo State University's Science and Math Complex which houses the planetarium.