The next solar eclipse is on April 8, 2024. We need to start planning for this “event of Biblical proportions” now, warns Dr. Carolyn Sumners, curator of Astronomy at The Houston Museum of Natural Science. One of the best places to see the eclipse will be in Texas, and Dr. Sumners shares her tips and tricks on where to go and how best to experience this amazing natural wonder. (TxDOT, are you ready?)

David Temple, curator of Paleontology at The Houston Museum of Natural Science, takes us on a tour of the prep lab and The Morian Hall of Paleontology as we discover “trace fossils”—things like fossilized poop, vomit, and tracks, which can tell us so much about what dinosaurs were up to before they met their fates.

Dr. Carolyn Sumners, curator of Astronomy, joins The Houston Museum of Natural Science interns in pondering the Big Questions: What things had to go right for Earth to be able to sustain life as we know it? Is our “example of one” all we’ll ever know? Or are aliens already walking among us? And, if invited, would you board an alien spacecraft?

Take a trip to the Moon and on to the “red planet” at The Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Expedition Center, one of the museum’s hidden gems. Ken Hayes, director of the Expedition Center, helps guide the “S.S. Legacy” space ship on our mission. Find out if we ran out of oxygen!

The Houston Museum of Natural Science interns are the lifeblood of the museum. During the summer months, they rule the museum’s “dungeon” area, running around behind the scenes and getting visitors excited about science. Meet these young innovators, hear about their award-winning science projects, and find out why young people like them are the future of science.

Take a journey through the cosmos with The Houston Museum of Natural Science and Will Yokely, an enthusiast of the James Webb telescope, who leads dazzling shows at the Burke Baker Planetarium and brings incredible galaxy adventures to kids through the museum’s traveling Discovery Dome. Learn more about the powerful machine’s latest cosmic discoveries as Yokely takes us out as far as we can see.

The unique and magical “Cabinet of Curiosities” exhibit at The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a place full of wonder, with fascinating objects from around the world—many of which may be unknown to visitors. Based on the mid-sixteenth-century German “Wunderkammer”—rooms where folks of means collected and displayed all manner of wondrous and exotic objects from global travels, and then invited friends in to ogle them—the Cabinet of Curiosities is essentially a museum origin story. Museum President Joel A. Bartsch, Curator of Paleontology David Temple, and avid fossil collector Samuel E. Stubbs share their love for these early rooms of collectibles, their personal collection stories, and their struggles with “collector’s disease,” an affliction that may be behind our love of museums today.

December 1972 was the last time humans touched the lunar surface when the astronauts of Apollo 17 “bounced around” there. Now, we’re going back for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to inspire a new generation of explorers! With its new Artemis missions, NASA will launch an unmanned rocket to the moon with the goal of eventually sending the first woman and first person of color to the Moon. Dr. Carolyn Sumners, curator of Astronomy at The Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Burke Baker Planetarium, shares why this is so important to humankind, and why many of us may very well be inhabiting the Moon in the very near future.