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Thursday 07.02.2009 @ 6:00pm

Venue: California Academy of Sciences (click here for venue details)

Every Thursday night through October 29th, the Academy will be transformed into a lively venue filled with music, provocative science, mingling, and cocktails, for visitors 21 and older. Activities and performers change week to week. See below for program details.
DJ Aaron Pope

This installment of NightLife features the long-awaited return of the Academy’s own DJ Aaron Pope – environmentalist by day, DJ by night. Currently living in San Francisco, Aaron has been a professional DJ there for eight years. He has played at almost every venue in San Francisco, for a wide range of promoters, and currently holds several local residencies. He has played in New York, Miami and Chicago, as well as abroad in Brazil, the Caribbean and Ibiza, and is currently exploring other international opportunities. His style encompasses many types of music, and he is just as likely to be found playing funky breaks at an underground party, or bouncy mid-tempo in a lounge-y environment as he is to be found playing peak-hour, uplifting house on a huge system.
BELLA GAIA – A Poetic Vision of Earth from Space

The Academy is honored to host the full-dome premier of BELLA GAIA in our state-of-the-art all digital planetarium.

BELLA GAIA (Beautiful Earth) is an audio-visual “Living Atlas” journey of our world, expressing the deeply moving beauty of planet Earth, as seen through the eyes of astronauts. Created by award winning director and classically trained violinist Kenji Williams, BELLA GAIA features a 45-minute live performance by Kenji, with a full-dome planetarium immersion of orbiting visualizations of Earth. From fires in the Amazon basin to time-lapse images of the Arctic ice melt, the stunning orbital imagery created by SCISS’ Uniview software and NASA provides an exquisite simulation of the astronaut’s view from space.

"BELLA GAIA is Just Beautiful. It really felt like I was back in Space.”
- Piers Sellers, NASA Astronaut, Spacewalker (STS-112 Atlantis, STS 121 Discovery)

Showtimes are at 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. Passes will be distributed on the night of the event on a first-come, first-served basis.



Exciting Programming This Week at NightLife

A 3D Tour of the Moon and Beyond
Presented by Michael Broxton of NASA Ames

Come see a pre-release version of the largest, highest resolution 3D model of the lunar surface ever created, and then fly out to Mars, our Solar System, and beyond in a very special tour of the universe in the Academy’s state-of-the-art digital 3D theater. Michael Broxton, from the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center, will be your guide on this journey, and talk about how NASA is using high resolution scans of film from the Apollo program and five Lunar Satellite Orbiters to reconstruct the lunar surface in stunning detail.

The 3D tour will take place in the Academy Forum Theater. Passes and 3D glasses will be distributed the night of the event on a first-come, first-served basis. Showtimes are TBA at this time.

Fragile Planet
The Academy’s daytime planetarium show
6:30 pm

Seating for planetarium shows is limited. Passes will be distributed the night of the event on a first-come, first-served basis at the Planetarium. Arrive early for the best chance of getting a seat.