page_title: Houston Museum of Natural Science
section_title: Facilities
hierarchical_section_title: Houston Museum of Natural Science / Facilities
caption_attribution_description: Cockrell Butterfly Center at the w:Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, Texas, USA.
context_page_description: The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science. Museum attendance totals over two million visitors each year. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre. The museum is one of the most popular in the United States and ranks just below New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in most attendance amongst non-Smithsonian museums. Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits.
context_section_description: Burke Baker Planetarium presents a range of science and astronomy shows. As of 2016, the planetarium is equipped with the Digistar 5 fulldome projection system. It is one of the first 8k planetariums in the United States.
  Originally opened in 1969 with a Spitz Space Transit Planetarium, the Planetarium upgraded to an Evans & Sutherland Digistar 1 vector display in 1988, and was the first in the U.S. and third in the world to adopt multiple-projector digital image capability using the Sky-Skan SkyVision system in 1998. That allowed it to show fulldome movies, many of which were created by HMNS staff. Since 2004 its outreach program, "Discovery Dome", takes the planetarium experience on the road, reaching over 40,000 students per year in classrooms and special events in portable digital domes.
  Cockrell Butterfly Center, a butterfly zoo located in museum complex. Opened in 1994, the center is housed in a three-story glass building filled with tropical plants and butterflies. The center exhibits a large range of live butterflies, including the migratory monarchs and their tropical cousins. The Cockrell Butterfly Center was reopened in May 2007 after being overhauled to make the exhibit more interactive; there are now games for children and a live insect zoo in the Brown Hall of Entomology.
  Wortham Giant Screen Theatre, a 394-seat theater presenting various educational films in 4K digital with advanced 3D technology on its 60x80 foot screen.
  George Observatory, an astronomy observatory equipped with three domed telescopes, including a 36-inch (910 mm) Gueymard Research Telescope and a solar telescope. The facility is located south of Sugar Land, Texas at Brazos Bend State Park. The observatory also houses a portion of the Challenger Learning Center for Space Science Education.
caption: Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
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