ann1124 — Announcement

Unique Hubble Laser Exhibit in New York City

22 November 2011

From the Distant Past, a laser art installation by German conceptual artist Tim Otto Roth, is now on public display in New York City, USA. Two green scanning lasers project spectra from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope onto the sphere of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

The spectra look like representations of brainwaves or heartbeats on a medical monitor, or the latest stock exchange data as they scroll around the planetarium’s dome. But in fact, they chart the colours and chemical composition of distant galaxies and quasars observed by Hubble. Some of these observations are of galaxies so distant that their light has taken many billions of years to reach us. “So the green laser waves represent some of the oldest colours in the Universe,” Roth explains.

From the Distant Past, which was previously exhibited in Venice, Italy and Baltimore, USA, was created by Tim Otto Roth in collaboration with astronomer Bob Fosbury, former head of the Space Telescope–European Coordinating Facility.

The laser display will be shown from 17:00–23:00 every evening until 27 November 2011, on the dome of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, on West 81st Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.