Touch the Sun
This interactive exhibition features stunning imagery from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The gallery design creates a contemplative, reverent space to experience the awesome “living” Sun and its connections to Earth.
Visitors touch a glass sphere to manipulate glowing arcs and streams of plasma inside, the shapes and motions echo plumes of the Sun’s atmospheric plasma and magnetic fields.
Using a touchscreen interface, visitors interact with the near-real-time solar imagery, zooming and panning to explore features like solar flares, prominences, and magnetically active regions that bring the Sun to life. The interface allows visitors to select different layers of ultraviolet imagery to highlight various features of the solar atmosphere.
Nearby hands-on exhibits give visitors a chance to explore the magnetic fields that shape the Sun’s behavior. And a solar art gallery presents solar imagery and mythology from numerous world cultures.
Visitors use small magnets to move and shape ferrofluid, magnetizing tiny suspended particles of iron in the fluid.
Seating and a touchscreen allow visitors to appreciate and interact with the large central display of dynamic and colorful images and animations from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Paintings explore the mythologies and representations of the Sun in ancient cultures throughout human history.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Project Type & Size
Permanent Exhibition
500 square feet
Location
Chabot Space & Science Center, Oakland, CA
Project Role
Project direction, content and experience development,
Collaborators
Design and experience development: Ulrika Andersson
Digital development: Whatever Digital
Fabrication: Gizmo Art Production, Roger Carr, Ed Kirshner, Adams & Chittenden Scientific Glass, Concept Zero
Painting: Andrew Johnstone, Jay Ramos
Interactive drawing stations invite visitors to create their own digital drawings of activity on the Sun's surface.
Image credits: Person using touchscreen, Central display with seating, Visitors view solar art © Tamara Schwarz; all others © Chabot Space & Science Center