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Oakland’s New Chabot Space & Science Center sponsors its first national tour 

Ned Kahn’s “Planetary Landscapes: Sculpting the Solar System” to be seen in New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida

1 March 2001 – OAKLAND, CA: Imagine passing your hand through a cauldron of billowing, moist fog, or creating a network of streams in fine powder. Visitors experience these and other phenomena in Planetary Landscapes: Sculpting the Solar System, a hands-on exhibition on permanent display at Chabot Space & Science Center (CSSC) in Oakland. Planetary Landscapes features fourteen interactive sculptures by internationally renowned artist Ned Kahn, that explore, in constantly varying patterns, the dynamic forces that shape our Solar System.

CSSC has organized a parallel exhibition for travel to institutions across the U.S. As the first stop in its national tour, Planetary Landscapes is now beautifully installed at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, where it remains on exhibit through April 30, 2001. Located across the river from Manhattan, the science center hosts an average of 2,100 schoolchildren each weekday. After closing at Liberty Science Center, the exhibition continues its tour at the North Carolina Museum of Life & Science (June 1 - August 31, 2001), Orlando Science Center in Florida (June 1 - August 31, 2002), and three other institutions.

In an unexpected display of the forces of nature, the tour got off to an icy start when the truck transporting the exhibits was slow to arrive in New Jersey. By the time the shipment was unloaded, the exhibits were frozen and laced with ice crystals. The staff waited anxiously for 36 hours as the exhibits slowly thawed, and were relieved to find that once back to normal temperature, all were in excellent condition.

The exhibition displays effects of natural phenomena such as turbulence, flow, wind, and the drive toward equilibrium. In Static Landscape, thousands of tiny steel balls cascade across the surface of a large shallow disk, generating electrical charges. Visitors alter the patterns by tilting the disk and running their hands over its surface. Static forces organize the balls into dazzling waves and other intricate patterns that resemble the lightning in Jupiter's atmosphere, or the solar winds that charge the soil of the Moon and other bodies not protected by a magnetic field.

In Dust Devil, visitors activate a vortex that sweeps up fine particles of sand to form a twirling dust devil. Particles drift in and out of the vortex, as in dust devils of the Martian atmosphere. The sculpture also offers an opportunity to observe relative scale and time in a vortex: a dust devil may last ten minutes, a tornado an hour, and a hurricane a week, while Jupiter's great Red Spot has swirled for over 300 years. Accompanying photographs taken during space flights and on Earth reveal the same patterns as those created in the sculptures.

A unique blend of art and science, Planetary Landscapes: Sculpting the Solar System was developed by Chabot Space & Science Center with support from the National Science Foundation.

The new Chabot Space & Science Center opened to the public on August 19, 2000. It is an innovative teaching and learning center focusing on astronomy and the inter-relationships of all the sciences. Its telescope and observatory complex, domed-screen Tien MegaDome Theater, Ask Jeeves Planetarium, exhibits and natural park setting are a place where students, teachers and the public can imagine, understand and learn to shape their future. Set amid thirteen trail-laced acres in Joaquin Miller Park, with glorious views of San Francisco Bay and the Oakland foothills, the $76-million complex offers a hands-on celebration of sights, sounds, and science. 

Chabot Space & Science Center is the continuation and expansion of Oakland, California’s public Chabot Observatory that has served San Francisco Bay Area schools and citizens with astronomy and science education programs for 117 years. The institution began in 1883 as the Oakland Observatory, through a gift from Anthony Chabot to the City of Oakland. The original Oakland Observatory was located in downtown Oakland, and provided public telescope viewing for the community. For decades, it served as the official timekeeping station for the entire Bay Area, measuring time with its transit telescope.

For information and tickets, please call (510) 336-7300. www.chabotspace.org.

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