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Truths behind your favorite photographic landscapes

National Geographic: 50 Greatest Landscapes, a photography exhibition featuring 50 interesting and awe-inspiring landscapes from around the world, will be on display at the Science Center through the end of the year.

 

Yellowstone

More than a third of Yellowstone sits within the caldera of an active volcano that hasn’t erupted in approximately 640,000 years. However, the heat from the magma powering that eruption still contributes to the park’s famous geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mud pots. According to researchers, another eruption happening in the next 10,000 years is “extremely unlikely,” but scientists still monitor Yellowstone’s thousands of small earthquakes and changes in geothermal gases for signs of an impending eruption.

 

Lake Natron in the Great Rift Valley (Border of Tanzania and Kenya)

This beautiful, vibrant red is a product of nature and science at its finest. Within the hyper-saline waters of Lake Natron in the Great Rift Valley, salt-loving algae react with the water to create the red color you see here. The lake’s unique mineral content comes from the natural environment of surrounding volcanoes and its temperatures can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.


Stereograph Card

The Science Center has displayed many artifacts from its Collections Department to complement this exhibition, including this stereograph card.
This image is a part of a two-volume, hand-painted set produced by the Keystone View Company in 1905. Entitled the “Feast of Chrysanthemums,” the card shows three Japanese women sitting in a garden of blooming chrysanthemums. For over a thousand years, the Japanese celebrated this autumn “royal” flower with a festival, and it is held in higher esteem than even the popular cherry blossom.



Watch the exhibition tour

 

Have you ever heard about the hidden secrets in Leonardo da Vinci’s works?

Da Vinci paved the way for the future of science, engineering, art and much more. He used many of his notebooks to collect his drawings, thoughts and observations. To the naked eye, the notebook looks like a hidden message or an entirely different language. However, the secret behind his “secret code” is that he wrote in mirror writing, where he would write full sentences backwards. In reality, all someone had to do was hold up a mirror to the books to “decipher” his code. Many speculate that he wrote backwards because he was a lefty and did not want to smudge the ink, while others speculate it was his way of keeping people from stealing his ideas.

You Try – Hold up a mirror to the image below and see what the message says. Then, try your hand at writing your own secret message by writing backwards. Share it with us on social media and use #MuseumFromHome.

Da Vinci The Exhibition has been extended to stay at the museum until September 27.

Visit the Da Vinci The Exhibition for updates and availability.

Unique Facts Behind OMNIMAX® Films

Whether you have seen this OMNIMAX film or you are looking forward to seeing it in the future, let’s test your knowledge around the Apollo 11 mission.

See updates on OMNIMAX showtimes.


Apollo 11 Facts

Q. In July 1969, Apollo 11 safely landed on the moon. How many miles are there between the earth and the moon?

A. 240,000 miles. The spacecraft landed on the moon at 4pm EDT on July 20 and Neil Armstrong took the first step at 11pm EDT. 550 million people watched it on TV around the world.

Fact 1: There is more computing power in your cell phone than the entire computing power for the Apollo 11 program. Computers were used for only a limited number of tasks on Apollo programs, such as guidance and communications. But these Apollo programs marked the first time computers were used, launching the computer era.

Margaret Hamilton stands next to a stack of Apollo Guidance Computer source code. Credits: Courtesy MIT Museum
Margaret Hamilton stands next
to a stack of Apollo Guidance
Computer source code.
Credits: Courtesy MIT Museum

Fact 2: Margaret Hamilton, from MIT, is credited with inventing the term “software engineering” and wrote the actual computer code for the Apollo Guidance Computer that helped land the astronauts on the moon. Many women were part of the NASA team in the early space program leading up to Apollo. They worked on mathematical problems and were sometimes called the, “the human computers.”