China's FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) can detect radio signals emitted tens of thousands of light-years away, and engineers have faced unprecedented challenges in constructing a giant radio receptor nestled amid mountains. From novel technological innovations to architectural challenges, we follow every step that gave birth to the biggest radio telescope ever constructed.
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From the Atoms to the Stars (2017)
An incredible travel through space and time between the walls of the Paris Observatory, which is celebrating its 350th birthday. Place of discoveries such as speed of light or Neptune’s existence, it is still today one of the oldest operating observatories and the greatest hub in the world for astronomy and astrophysics researches, second only to Harvard.
Venus: Death of a Planet (2021)
Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shrouded in a dense, toxic atmosphere. Scientists are now unveiling daring new strategies to search for clues from a time when the planet was alive.
Living Worlds (2021)
What forms might life take in the Solar System and beyond? In the Academy's newest original planetarium show, see how a deeper understanding of Earth might help us locate other living worlds, light years away.
Chasing the Equinox (2019)
The ancients hid the secrets of their incredible knowledge of astronomy in their temples and palaces, built to align with the sun, on the same day, all over the world. Revealing our species' obsession with the sun, across thousands of years and every continent, this is architectural magic on a cosmic scale.
Star Men (2015)
Four exceptional astronomers celebrate 50 years of work and friendship on a return road trip in the southwestern United States, recapturing youthful adventures and recounting each other's influences on the most exciting period in astronomy’s history. Roger the instrument-maker, Donald the theoretician, Nick the visionary, and Wal the observer. Together they represent the most productive period astronomy has ever had. They helped build the world’s biggest observatories and made revolutionary discoveries about the evolving universe, discoveries that have the power to change the way humanity sees itself. Alison Rose’s film is a funny, insightful, humbling and intimate portrait of friendship, as the men reflect on how their profound work on the universe has reflected back on the individual, affecting their sense of religious faith, how life may have purpose, and what is knowable and unknowable.
Black Suns: An Astrophysics Adventure (NaN)
BLACK SUNS: AN ASTROPHYSICS ADVENTURE is a documentary about chasing eclipses and science dreams. It chronicles the lives of two globetrotting African American astrophysicists, Dr. Alphonse Sterling and Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, as they follow the two solar eclipses that occurred in 2012. Dr. Alphonse Sterling of NASA, stationed in Japan, had early success in the US, but left his home country to further cultivate his wide-ranging interests. Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi of the Florida Institute of Technology, is a scientist who beat the odds of poverty, and a poor early education, to get where he is today. The film is hosted by award-winning cultural astronomer Dr. Jarita Holbrook.
The Silent Pulse of the Universe (2021)
Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967 when she pushed through the skepticism from her superiors to make one of the greatest astrophysical discoveries of the twentieth century. While Jocelyn was belittled and sexually harassed by the media, the Nobel Prize was awarded to her professor and his boss.
Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.
Searching for Planet 9 (2022)
At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the Earth. Several international teams of scientists have been competing in a frantic race to detect it, in uncharted territories, far beyond Neptune. The recent discovery of several dwarf planets, with intriguing trajectories, have put astronomers on the trail of this mysterious planet. Why is this enigmatic planet so difficult to detect? What would a ninth planet teach us about our corner of the universe? Could it help us unlock some of the mysteries of our solar system?
Riding Light (2015)
In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective. Liberties were taken with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall the size and distances of all the objects were kept as accurate as possible. It was also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter to keep the running length below an hour.
TimeScapes (2012)
Stunning slow-motion and timelapse cinematography of the landscapes, people and wildlife of the American South West.
Beyond Hubble: Launching the Telescope of Tomorrow (2021)
Following engineers and scientists on a groundbreaking mission as they build, test and launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever constructed, and discovers the astonishing cosmological mysteries it will investigate.
Black Holes: Messages from the Edge of the Universe (2017)
It is the birth of neutrino astronomy. For the first time, astrophysicists can detect extra-terrestrial neutrinos in ice on the South Pole. The fundamental questions of science remain unanswered., how did the universe come to be? What keeps our world together? The newly discovered extra-galactic neutrinos may hold the keys to answering these questions.
Undaunted: The Forgotten Giants of the Allegheny Observatory (2012)
This film tells the surprising story of how the Allegheny Observatory has been a world leader in the study of the stars since the 1860s. Self-educated, and often facing unrelenting hardships, the people associated with the Allegheny Observatory defied the odds to make enormous contributions to the founding of astrophysics and early aviation.
A Sidewalk Astronomer (2005)
John Dobson, an 89 year old with a white ponytail and knack for comedy, is the inventor of the Dobsonian telescope mount, which revolutionized astronomy by making large, inexpensive telescopes and deep space observing available to amateur astronomers around the world.
