When we look up into the night sky, we see a dazzling, quiet blanket of stars rolling out before us; a tranquil and unchanging view. Nothing could be further from the truth.

At the American Museum of Natural History, we're setting out to dispel that myth with our stunning new planetarium show, Cosmic Collisions. In a half-hour, you go on a ride through space like none other: watch a meteor shower from upstate New York, see the formation of the Moon (pictured here), watch the impact that wiped out most of the dinosaurs, and witness our galaxy colliding with another billions of years into the future. And it's all so real you get goosebumps... almost like you could reach out and touch it (or at least feel it, as your seats rattle with each dramatic boom).

We've been busy getting ready for this show at the Museum for several months now (the show itself was two years in the making). In the Education Department, it's our job to prepare awesome resources to complement stuff like this. So we created a beautiful educator's guide, a nifty interactive with photos of the Sun, a classroom activity produced with Scholastic.com, and a documentary feature about asteroids for our Science Bulletins site. Then we organized all these resources together in a special collection on the Museum's site.

Meanwhile, the press has been all praise this week. Here's a sampling: the New York Times says "If this show were a symphony, the section on the Sun and the aurora would be a flute solo, but most of us will have come for the crescendos, the planet-cleansing life-changing events, the big booms." Watch a video from NY1. And here's a behind-the-scenes look at the show that ran in the Times a few weeks ago. More press: Newsday, ABC News, and Seed Magazine

Plan a trip now: this is one show you don't want to miss!