Astrovisualization expert Carter Emmart to visit Hunter

Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), will visit Hunter College as part of Astronomy 101, an arts-integrated course coordinated by Assistant Professor Kelle Cruz and taught by Daniele Pinna.

Emmart will discuss "The Art of Presenting the Cosmos" on Monday, April 30, 2012, at 11 am in Hunter's Assembly Hall. The event is open to all Hunter students.

"The vast layout of the universe is truly mind numbing, innately 3-D, and spans time beyond our comprehension," Emmart said. "So how do we get our heads around it? Astronomers are trained to carry it in their heads, but wouldn't it be great to get inside what they see? We do it by visualizing three-dimensionally the data they gather and by placing it in context to our place within it. Projected into domes, we can literally move through it and experience the universe we map from this one small place within it."

The AMNH Rose Center / Hayden Planetarium has put together the Digital Universe Atlas from all astronomical catalogs with distances. Along with simulations of astrophysics that show how the universe behaves and evolves, the Digital Universe Atlas helps Emmart and other experts at the AMNH to craft space-show productions.

Join Emmart to see how a life's fascination with the cosmos and growing up in a family of artists brought him to the methods now used to teach astronomical understanding around the world.