The journey we propose is centered on the concept of light: thanks to its finite speed, light allows us to observe the past, not the present. Thanks to light, it is possible to travel through time by looking at the sky: the further away we look, the further back in time we can see. This journey will introduce the public to theINAF, the leading Italian research institute for the study of the universe, and which aims to play between the old and the new, but with content that speaks to today and the future.
The exhibition unfolds across four spaces. It begins immediately with an immersive experience: leaving planet Earth behind, you fly through the planets of the Solar System and beyond, towards the exoplanets orbiting other stars. To explore our cosmic neighborhood, the Solar System has been recreated on the scale of the Mediterranean, with Matera standing in for the Sun, reproduced 400 million times smaller than the real one. Visitors to the exhibition can discover where, on this scale, the various celestial bodies orbiting it would be located, thus grasping the enormity of interplanetary distances. Planets, comets, and asteroids are reimagined in a playful version with a real 1980s-style arcade. You can also get lost in the Astrophysical Cody Maze, a maze from which you can only escape by correctly answering astronomy questions. The journey continues among planets, stars, galaxies, and gigantic galaxy clusters, encompassing the immense cosmic scales that the Time Machines of contemporary astrophysics strive to grasp, all the way back to the dawn of the universe. The journey culminates in a veritable "art gallery" celebrating the astonishing beauty of the cosmos, immortalized by our telescopes and scientific instruments, which peer into the cosmos across all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, from every continent on our planet and even in orbit aboard satellites and space probes. Through a combination of iconic images, interactive exhibits, and innovative technologies such as virtual reality, visitors to the exhibition will come into direct contact with the challenges of research that, day after day, pushes the limits of our knowledge ever further.
The exhibition's contents are presented in both Italian and English. We also sought to utilize various tools to make the information, or even the emotion, accessible through the senses, adding detail to those who can access all modes of representation, while also allowing those who cannot grasp a certain sensory input to access the message. Specifically, the exhibition includes tactile representations of the astronomical observations and the telescopes that made them, sonifications of the data that allow the images to be "felt," and audio descriptions of the spaces and contents.
