Carter Emmart

Artist, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Explorer, Filmmaker, Idea generator, Photographer, Public servant, Scientist, World traveler

Carter is the director of Astrovisualization for production and education at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He was one of the original team members at AMNH of the NASA funded Digital Galaxy Project that helped redefine how a planetarium theater can present science to the public. The rebuilt Hayden Planetarium dome within the Rose Center for Earth and Space is now used as an immersive display that serves to surround its audiences in an accurately visualized 3D data atlas of the universe. Carter directs space show production and oversees software development for interactive use of the 3D universe atlas known as the Digital Universe. Starting astronomy courses at the age of ten in the old Hayden, Carter grew up in a family of artists and got his BA in geophysics from the University of Colorado. He has had careers in architectural modeling, technical illustration and science visualization at NASA Ames Research Center and the National Center for Atmospheric Research prior to joining the staff at AMNH in 1998. In 2006 Carter was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Linkoping University in Sweden for his work in astrovisualization and his mentoring of a graduate masters thesis program at AMNH. The interactive software, Uniview grew out of this program as a viewer for the Digital Universe atlas. The Swedish company SCISS, AB was established in 2004 in order to make Uniview a product.

The perspective of earth from space and how that influences our actions, telepresence, mars, astrobiology, intelligence of other species, world heritage sites, teaching children globally.

We must bring the astronaut view down here to earth for all to see. We must understand we live upon a limited system. In a universe filled with beauty, our planet is the most hospitable, most varied, most colorful, and most important world we know. We live in paradise, yet, in the way we treat our home and each other, that becomes hard to see. Seeing our special jewel of a planet against the vastness of the universe makes me not want to leave it, but celebrate it. We easily forget we are already in space on a spaceship we evolved with, and are part of. Its time we all realize this.

Astronomical Visualization

I first heard of TED from Dan Dubno of CBS news. Later, my good friend and fellow founding member of the Mars Underground, Penny boston gave a TED talk about her work in origins of life studies and cave explorations for archean bacteria. I have been presenting the atlas of the universe for ten years at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and June Cohen saw some of that for the 2009 World Science Festival and invited me to come share it with TED. I was very honored to be asked to come and present at TED 2010.

Making Ukrainian eggs and photographing the great American icon, Barbie, around the world.