The Comet

The Once and Future Griffith Observatory

May 2006 •English

Documentary about the Griffith Observatory, shown at their Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater

The Mystery of Chaco Canyon

January 1999 •English

Chaco Canyon, located in northwest New Mexico, is perhaps the only site in the world constructed in an elaborate pattern that mirrors the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon. How did an ancient civilization, with no known written language, arrange its buildings into a virtual celestial calendar, spanning an area roughly the size of Ireland?

Cielo

October 2017 •English

The first feature from Alison McAlpine is a dialogue with the heavens—in this case, the heavens above the Andes and the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where she alights on the desert- and mountain-dwelling astronomers, fishermen, miners, and cowboys who live their lives with reverence and awe for the skies.

Space Station 3D

April 2002 •English

Some 220 miles above Earth lies the International Space Station, a one-of-a-kind outer space laboratory that 16 nations came together to build. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this extraordinary structure in this spectacular IMAX film. Viewers will blast off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center and the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia for this incredible journey -- IMAX's first-ever space film. Tom Cruise narrates.

Riding Light

January 2015 •English

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.

The Silent Pulse of the Universe

July 2021 •English

Part of the Almost Famous series. 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.

Destination astéroïdes

October 2022 •French

Apollo 13: Survival

March 2024 •English

Using original footage and interviews, this documentary tells the nail-biting story of Apollo 13 and the struggle to bring its astronauts safely home.

Wake Up, Leviathan

October 2015 •Portuguese

T. S. Eliot ends one of his most famous poems, "The Hollow Men", by repeating three times the sentence "This is how the world ends" - and then adding: "Not with a bang but a whimper."

Chasing the Equinox

November 2019 •English

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.

Hubble's Cosmic Journey

April 2015 •English

This is your window into the universe… Hubble was launched in April 1990 on board Space Shuttle Discovery. Its release into orbit over 500km above the Earth marked the birth of one of humanity’s biggest dreams; to place a telescope into space, high above the obscuring effects of the atmosphere, to gain the clearest view of the cosmos we could hope to see. But in the months which followed it was clear that the dream had turned into a nightmare, as Hubble’s mirror was found to have a flaw. Three years of heartache and huge human resolve followed, to mount a rescue mission to fix the flaw. The results were breath taking and produced the most complete view of the Universe we’ve ever had. This is the story of the men and women who conceived, built, fixed and operated Hubble – the most celebrated science instrument in history.

Beyond Hubble: Launching the Telescope of Tomorrow

December 2021 •English

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.

Spacelift: Transporting Trek Into the 21st Century

January 2011 •English

Spacelift Transporting Trek Into The 21st Century, shows you how they Remastered The Special Effects from Star Trek Classic to CGI, the re recording of the theme music and the look of the Enterprise.

Passage of Venus

December 1874 •French

Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.

Prehistoric Astronomers

January 2007 •English

Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied recently. What if Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that Prehistoric Man actually invented Astronomy!

Shadow Chasers

September 2000 •French

This feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - among nature's more spectacular phenomena – are a veritable obsession. The film follows 4 of them as they travel incredible distances to witness the last total eclipse of the millennium as it sweeps eastward across Europe to India. At various points along the way enthusiasts Alain Cirou in France, Paul Houde in Austria, Olivier Staiger in Germany and Debasis Sarkar in India offer their impressions of the historic event.

Searching for Planet 9

September 2022 •French

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?

Venus: Death of a Planet

August 2021 •English

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.

The Biggest Dream

December 2021 •English

The loss of the Bill E. Gordon radio telescope has left a void in the world of radio science, the mountains that cradled it, and the hearts of many visitors and enthusiasts who appreciated the beautiful engineering marvel. It’s a difficult time for the scientists and those who grew up seeing the telescope every day in the fields of atmospheric science, planetary science, and Radio astronomy. Experience the legacy of a 57 year journey, from the small island of Puerto Rico to the deepest regions of the galaxy with the world's most powerful telescope.

Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery

April 2020 •English

For thirty years, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered new alien worlds, black holes, and the age of the universe itself; NASA astronauts reveal the secret history of the life-or-death missions to keep this complex machine working.