How a planetarium show discovered a spiral at the edge of our solar system

Space artists can sometimes stretch scientific data for a bigger visual bang. At New York’s natural history museum, they found a truth stranger than fiction.

If you’ve ever flown through outer space, at least while watching a documentary or a science fiction film, you’ve seen how artists turn astronomical findings into stunning visuals. But in the process of visualizing data for their latest planetarium show, a production team at New York’s American Museum of Natural History made a surprising discovery of their own: a trillion-and-a-half mile long spiral of material drifting along the edge of our solar system.