Exhibitions

"At a time when the future of the planet is paramount, Mars is particularly interesting, as the planet can not only teach us about the universe's past and the origin of life, but also about our future and what we (may) have in store".

– Nicolai Howalt

In A Journey: The Near Future, the Danish artist Nicolai Howalt depicts our as yet unexplored red neighbor, many millions of kilometers away. Howalt's work is based on the photographic panoramas captured on the surface of Mars by the NASA rovers Curiosity, Perseverance, Spirit and Opportunity.

In A Journey: The Near Future, the analogue and the digital, the human and the mechanical, the near and the distant go hand in hand. By converting the digital NASA files into analog photographic negatives, Howalt transforms the images from digital information into physical photographs created in the photographic darkroom with light, chemistry and human interaction. Through this processing of the images, Howalt opens them up to a sensitive gaze directed not only at scientific data collection, but also at existential and historically conscious reflections.

Black and white photography has always been associated with the presence of a photographer. Howalt thus infuses the Martian landscapes with a sense of human presence, bringing us into unreal proximity to a landscape where no human has yet been. In their transformation from pixels to silver halogens, the panoramas become images brought into view not by the distant eyes of a robot, but by human intervention, sight and sensitivity.

Everything you are comes from the universe.

The building blocks of your body - the atoms - come from space, and on a cosmic journey we find out exactly where the different elements are formed.

The hydrogen in the water in your cells comes from the beginning of it all - from the Big Bang. Life is made up of DNA, which is made up of the element carbon, which is formed in stars. The stars in the universe act as large element factories, and this is also where the iron in your blood is formed. The element zinc is important for your immune system and comes from large stellar explosions - supernovae.

The exhibition is an explosion of visual impressions. It was created in collaboration with London-based exhibition and design company ‘59 Productions’ with the idea of putting the viewer at the centre. We use the latest technology, and the entire exhibition is designed from the ground up based on professionalism.

In 2018, the exhibition, ‘Cosmos’, won an Ecsite Award in the ‘Sustainable Success’ category for its inclusive and engaging exhibition on astrophysics.

However, the meteorite was not easy to bring home to Denmark, as it had to be lifted free by hand and then onto a steel sled, which could then be used to transport the ton-heavy iron meteorite down towards the coast. It wasn't until four years after it was found that Agpalilik was shipped all the way to Denmark.

Today, the majority of the iron meteorite stands on its steel sled in front of the Geological Museum, but here in Planetarium you can also experience a 650 kg piece of the famous meteorite.

Agpalilik is a piece of the famous iron meteorite Cape York, which crashed several thousand years ago in Baffin Bay, which is also located in northwestern Greenland.

The first parts of the Cape York meteorite were found in 1894, when the polar explorer Robert E. Peary succeeded in finding as many as three fragments, with the help of a number of locals. The pieces were recovered and then transported to New York by ship, where they can still be found today at the American Museum of Natural History.
The three iron meteorites were named Ahnighito, Woman and Dog, and weigh respectively 31 tons, 3 tons and 407 kg.