captionA snapshot of the American Natural History Museums Worlds Beyond Earth immersive theater experience.sourceD. Finnin/ AMNH

For many years, there were only two ways for astronomers to see distant worlds in our solar system: Either they used a powerful telescope, or they sent spacecraft into the inky blackness to get up close and personal.

But a third option is emerging to offer unprecedented detail and accuracy: data visualization.

At the American Museum of Natural History, a new planetarium show reveals images of Saturns moon Titan, the 67P comet, and the lunar surface, all generated using data collected during 50 years of space missions.

Were not making anything up here, Carter Emmart, director of astrovisualization for that show, said at a press conference. The height, color, and shapes we see come from actual measurements. You get to see these beautiful objects as they actually are, to the best of our abilities.

Carter and his team relied on data gathered by robotic probes, telescopes, and supercomputer simulations from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration since the 1970s.

Were taking numbers and turning that into a picture, he told Business Insider. Weve created a 3D world that lives in the computer and can be shown on screen.

Take a look at some of the most impressive visuals from the show,Worlds Beyond Earth, which opened Tuesday.

Other planetariums, like Chicagos Adler Planetarium, also utilize data visualization, relying on research about planetary orbits, surface maps, and the location of spacecraft to create accurate imagery. But the Hayden Planetarium in New York displays the most comprehensive color palette.

In 1971, Falcon carried astronauts David Scott and Jim Irwin, along with the first Lunar Roving Vehicle, down to the moon. That so-called moon buggy helped Scott and Irwin explore a much wider swath of the lunar surface.

Spacecraft are extensions of ourselves: our eyes, ears, and nose, the shows curator, Denton Ebel, told Business Insider.

The red planet was once akin to Earth, with plentiful water and active volcanoes. But the planets core cooled just 500 million years after Mars formation. That cooling, according to museum scientists, caused the decay of Mars magnetic field, which protected the planet from solar winds. Without it, Mars lost its atmosphere.

According to Ebel, Magellan revealed that Venus was also once like Earth but now has a surface hot enough to melt lead.

Venus is a hellscape, really, Ebel said, because it, too, lacks a magnetic field. Without that protection, solar winds stripped away any water.

Cassini discovered that Saturns moon Enceladus sprays plumes of water into space. That told scientists that the moon has an ocean of liquid water under its icy surface.

Titan boasts a thick atmosphere and weather. But its too cold to hold liquid water; its lakes and rain are made of liquid methane.

Saturns rings bubble with moonlets: house-sized baby moons that form as space dust coalesces. Ebel said the process by which these moonlets were born parallels how all eight planets in our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Planets formed within this disk which resembled Saturns rings as did moons, comets, and asteroids. Then eight planets (along with dwarf planet Pluto) grew as they incorporated more material.

In 1979, NASAs Voyager I mission took snapshots of Io, revealing the moon to be the most volcanically active object in the solar system. Some of Ios volcanoes spew lava dozens of miles into the sky; its surface is peppered by lakes of lava.

Ebels group used data from NASAs Galileo mission to glean insight into Jupiters magnetic field.

The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter has hot, liquid, metallic hydrogen churning around its rocky core. That generates a powerful magnetic field.

One of Jupiters moons, Ganymede, also has such a field.

The comet, called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is only a few kilometers across, but it contains frozen water, dust, and amino acids the basic chemical building blocks of life.

When comets collided with planets and moons earlier in the solar systems history, some delivered life-giving chemicals like phosphorus.

It took Rosetta 10 years to reach 67P, enter its orbit, and send a lander down to the surface.

He added that production work on the Worlds Beyond Earth show lasted a full year so that the team could make damn sure that every bit of space that were putting up there on the screen is accurate to the best of our knowledge.

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New, detailed pictures of planets, moons, and comets are neither photos nor animations theyre made using data from 50 years of NASA missions -...