Destination Mars
2025-07-21 14:00 - 15:00, 2025-07-22 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-07-23 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York) | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
Ever wonder what it would be like to fly to Mars? NASA – and others – have their sights set on the Red Planet and they’re building the technology to get us there! Destination Mars: The New Frontier gives you an up-close look at humanity’s most epic endeavor.

The Great Planet Adventures
2025-07-22 11:00 - 12:00, 2025-07-23 11:00 - 12:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
Off-World Thrills on Every Planet
With muscles and bones made on Earth, you’ll be a super star on the solar system’s low-gravity worlds. Imagine zip lining on the scorched Mercury or snowmobiling when it really snows on Pluto. Bungee jumping into outer space from an asteroid is like low-g diving from the tallest cliff or rappelling into deepest canyon in the solar system. Without gravity’s strong pull, you can glide over the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan, jet-pack in a geyser’s spray on Triton, or even drive a monster truck along a steep lunar crater wall. The Great Planet Adventures brings you each of these incredible off-world adventures.

From Earth to the Universe
2025-07-23 14:00 - 15:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
A desire to comprehend the Universe may well be humanity’s oldest shared intellectual experience. Only recently have we truly begun to grasp our place in the vast cosmos. To learn about this journey of celestial discovery, from the theories of the ancient Greek astronomers to today’s grandest telescopes, we invite you to experience From Earth to the Universe.

One World One Sky
2025-07-24 11:00 - 12:00, 2025-07-25 11:00 - 12:00, 2025-07-26 11:00 - 12:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
One World One Sky follows Sesame Street‘s Big Bird and Elmo as they explore the night sky with Hu Hu Zhu, a Muppet from China. Together, they take an imaginary trip to the moon, where they discover how different it is from Earth.

Seeing a Photon's journey
2025-07-24 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-07-25 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-07-25 19:00 - 20:00, 2025-07-26 13:00 - 14:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
distant star, before travelling across the vast expanse of space to land on someone’s retina

Rusty Rocket’s Last Blast
2025-07-28 11:00 - 12:00, 2025-07-29 11:00 - 12:00, 2025-07-30 11:00 - 12:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
Join Rusty Rocket and his band of rocket rookies as they explore the solar system. Fly across Saturn’s rings, soar along a Martian canyon; delve deep into the solar interior! Show length: 33 minutes

Planet Nine
2025-07-28 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-07-29 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-07-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
In July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft gave us our first close look at Pluto, the most famous dwarf planet in the outskirts of our Solar System. The flyby was big news, and the data sent back to Earth revealed a world far more complex than anyone realized. Are there more worlds out there, beyond Pluto? What might such a world be like?

Undiscovered Worlds
2025-07-28 14:00 - 15:00, 2025-07-30 13:00 - 14:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
This show explores a timeless question: Do other planets like Earth exist?
Through the discovery of exoplanets, the hundreds of planets that have been found orbiting stars beyond the Sun, we have learned that our solar system is not alone in the universe and have had to redefine our understanding of planets and solar systems.
With rapidly improving technology and endeavors like the Kepler Telescope, the discovery of exoplanets represents one step closer to the possibility of finding an Earth-like world.

Traveling with Light
2025-07-31 11:00 - 12:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
Through the conversation between a child and his mother, the planetarium show “Travelling with Light” tackles the importance of light in all areas of our lives. The movie presents different scenarios that reveal the complexity of light and its direct influence on our planet.

The Cowboy Astronomer
2025-07-31 13:00 - 14:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States
The Cowboy Astronomer is a skillfully woven tapestry of star tales and Native American legends, combined with constellation identification, star-hopping, and astronomy tidbits — all told from the unique viewpoint of a cowboy astronomer who has traveled the world plying his trade and learning the sky along the way.
The basic premise of The Cowboy Astronomer is simple: we’re in the Western outdoors, listening to star legends and cowboy tales around the campfire. Our cowboy astronomer gives us his perspective of the night sky, and the things he’s found out over a lifetime of stargazing. He talks about star colors and temperatures — and we see how blue stars are hotter than red stars by the chili pepper ratings beneath them! We find the Andromeda Galaxy by hitting a first-base foul out of the park of the Great Baseball Diamond In The Sky. Along the way, we learn about young stars and supernovae, and what various cultures called the Pleiades.
We hear two Native American star tales: the Fisher story of the cruel chieftain holding the birds of summer captive, and the Devil’s Tower tale of the Seven Indian Maidens and the Bear. We see the Anasazi pictographs of the 1054 supernova, and Sirius rising over Wyoming’s Medicine Wheel. The show ends on a thoughtful, philosophical manner, as our cowboy muses about the constellation where he wants to head when he departs this Earth. He decides on Cygnus, for the black hole it contains.
There’s never been a program like The Cowboy Astronomer. It’s a fresh new perspective in the planetarium medium; a unique, different, and thoroughly entertaining show unlike anything you’ve seen or heard before. It’ll make your audiences laugh, it’ll tug at their heart strings — all the while teaching about the universe and humanity’s relationship with the stars.

Travelling With Light
2025-08-01 11:00 - 12:00, 2025-08-02 13:00 - 14:00 | Southworth Planetarium — Science Building, 70 Falmouth St, Portland, ME, 04103, United States

The Sun Our Living Star
2025-08-01 13:00 - 14:00
The Sun has shone on our world for four and a half billion years. The light that warms our skin today has been felt by every person who has ever lived. It is our nearest star and our planet’s powerhouse, the source of the energy that drives our winds, our weather and all life.

The Little Star That Could
2025-08-04 11:00 - 12:00
A little yellow star travels through the galaxy in search of planets to give it its name. During his journey, this star learns about the many types of stars that live in the galaxy. Hot blue stars; cool red stars; double stars, large stars and more.

Moons Worlds of Mystery
2025-08-04 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-08-05 11:00 - 14:00
When you consider the solar system, you often think of the Sun and its planets. But what about moons? What role do they play? Find out in Moons: Worlds of Mystery, a show from the Charles Hayden Planetariumt

Supermassive Black Hole
2025-08-04 14:00 - 15:00
Super Massive Black Hole
Leading scientists, industrial experts, and professionals in science dissemination come together to combine state-of-the-art observations, simulations and innovative tools to compare theory with observation, and shed light on the physics of black hole formation in the context of galaxy evolution.
