Space Place houses a growing number of exhibits aimed at a diverse audience. These include displays that focus on scientific concepts, such as the electromagnetic spectrum or the solar system; artifacts and instruments that highlight the University of Wisconsin’s history in astronomy and space sciences, including many instruments that actually have flown in space; and exhibits that explore some of the cutting-edge research that UW scientists currently perform.
Below is a partial list of exhibits at the Space Place, with a brief description of each.
Scientific Concepts
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
We explore the extraterrestrial universe primarily through light, radio, x-rays, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. Explore the electromagnetic spectrum itself here.
What is a Spiral Galaxy?
Galaxies are star-making machines, and our sun is one of the hundreds of billions of stars formed by our local Milky Way. Learn about the basic features of these complex, dynamic, and beautiful objects.
Earth and the Seasons
Seasons measure out our lives and affect how we eat, what we wear, where we travel, and so many other things affecting how we live. See the astronomical reasons for the seasons.
Gravity Well
Our local black hole shows how gravity shapes space and distorts motions into orbits just like those of comets, planets, and stars.
Match the Planets
The objects orbiting our Sun are wildly different from each other in size, make-up, and distances. Find out how big, small, and far apart the planets are–and try to figure out why Pluto is still there!
Past Scientific Research at UW
A Century of Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin
Astronomy was one of the first subjects ever taught at UW and quickly became a strength that places us in the first ranks of astronomical research today. Experience the history of UW astronomy here through fascinating pictures, documents, and artifacts.
The Orbiting Astronomical Observatory
OAO was the first true space observatory and the ancestor of the Hubble Space Telescope. UW’s Space Astronomy Lab designed one of OAO’s two sets of telescopes – the Wisconsin Experiment Package (WEP). You can see the full scale flight backup spacecraft with its telescope package, huge solar panels, and more, on display and explained at Space Place.
Click here to find out more about OAO-2 with Dr.Jim Lattis, Director of UW Space Place.
Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE)
This UW-built space telescope flew two missions on the Space Suttle in the 1990s to study celestial objects in ultraviolet light, which Earth’s atmosphere blocks. WUPPE is now on loan to the US Space and Rocket Center, where it is on exhibit while being reintegrated with the rest of the Astro Observatory payload, with the goal of eventually being on exhibit at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. For more details see Astro Restoration Project.
Click here to find out more about WUPPE with Dr.Jim Lattis, Director of UW Space Place.
High Speed Photometer (HSP)
The simplest of the five original scientific instruments on board the Hubble Space Telescope, the High Speed Photometer had no moving parts. Its five detectors measured the brightness of celestial objects in several different spectral bands in the ultraviolet, as well as their brightnesses in visible wavelengths. With funding provided by NASA, the Photometer was built at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, by astronomers, engineers, technicians, and students at the Space Astronomy Laboratory and the Space Science and Engineering Center.
Click here to find out more about HSP with Dr.Jim Lattis, Director of UW Space Place.
Wide-field Imaging Survey Polarimeter (WISP)
WISP, built on the UW campus, is our most experienced space astronomy instrument – a veteran of five successful launches into space during the 1990s to explore the ultraviolet light of distant stars.
Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer (DXS)
DXS, built by UW’s Space Science and Engineering Center, flew aboard the space shuttle in 1993 to observe the distribution of x-ray radiation of celestial sources that are invisible from Earth’s surface.
Suborbital Rocketry
This new exhibit, now under construction, highlights UW astronomy done with suborbital rockets and includes actual flight hardware.
Current Research Projects at UW
Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE)
Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, UW astronomers are observing previously unseen distant regions of our Milky Way galaxy. This exhibit explores how GLIMPSE has helped to change they way that astronomers understand the Milky Way.
The Telescopes of Wisconsin’s Astronomers
UW-Madison’s Astronomy Department has a long history of ground based telescopes. The exhibit “Feet on the Ground, Eyes on the Skies” explains how we have gone from using observatories such as Washburn to doing current research using the SALT telescope in South Africa.
Ice Cube
UW-Madison is building the largest telescope in the world at Earth’s South Pole in order to observe ghostly particles called neutrinos. Find out how to construct a telescope out of a cubic kilometer of ice, and why!