Movies: Astronomy

A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the trut...

In an American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events....

No one seems to understand Nakami. His nights are restless, his days sleepy, and his time at school is isolating. Yet all that seems to change when he encounters his carefree classmate, Magari, dozing off in their high school’s abandoned observatory....

A true historical drama about King Sejong, the greatest ruler in Joseon history who sought to enhance national prosperity and military power through astronomy, and Jang Yeong-sil, the most remarkable scientist....

Alice is an insecure Leo girl who thinks the stars have made a mistake with her, until one day she receives a blank book with only instructions that promise that any astrological prediction written on those pages will come true. With the power to inf...

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....

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 r...

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....

A look at the Sun, the star that revolves at the center of the Solar System, and its representation in art throughout history....

How's it all gonna end? This experience takes us on a journey to the end of time, trillions of years into the future, to discover what the fate of our planet and our universe may ultimately be. We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, ...

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Stunning slow-motion and timelapse cinematography of the landscapes, people and wildlife of the American South West....

The year is 1985. Oliver, a boy with an overflowing imagination, moves with his family to the southernmost corner of Europe, just as Halley's Comet is about to pass by. These events will mark a before and after in the emotional life of Óliver, who wi...

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. Th...

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 defie...

In this film, Méliès concocts a combination fairy- and morality tale about the foolishness of trying to look too deeply into the workings of an unstable and inscrutable universe. At a medieval school, an old astronomer begins to teach a class of youn...

In an age when misinformation, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories have become mainstream, UFOs have risen to become one of the most-talked about pop culture phenomena. With all of this noise, how can we expect anyone to know how much of this ...

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, shr...

In a mountainous region in an Asian backwater banana republic, it is said that the descendents of all those buried in its earth will be blessed with fantastic fortune and good health. However, if a special ceremony is not performed on the grounds, th...

Orson Welles — with contributions from scientists George Wald, Carl Sagan, and others — examines the possibility and implications of extraterrestrial life. In examining our perceptions of alien 'martians' from his "War of the Worlds" broadcast, to th...