Earth goes on display as the Houston Museum of Natural Science reopens to the public May 15

When it officially reopens May 15, the Houston Museum of Natural Science will have a new attraction: an internally lit, 23-foot in diameter sphere depicting planet Earth.

The new sculpture, titled “Gaia – Earth” by British artist Luke Jerrman, will be on display until June 30 at the Alfred C. Glassell Hall. It is included with admission to the museum's permanent exhibit halls.

The Earth-like sculpture will replace another of Jerram’s works, titled “Moon,” which was on display for over a year.

“I was amazed and delighted that my Museum of the Moon artwork has been so popular,” Jerram said in a news release. “I’m fully aware that 4 million members of the public haven’t been coming to see an artwork by ‘Luke Jerram’ but rather ‘the Moon’; an object of universal appeal and cultural significance. With this ‘Gaia Earth’ artwork, I’m interested in just how different the experience and interpretation is. For our entire human existence we have been gazing up at the moon and projecting all our hopes, dreams and wishes up there.”

The Earth installation is aiming to recreate the "Overwatch Effect," the sense of awe of seeing the planet from space, according to the release.

“Gaia” will attempt to do this with high-resolution NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface, floating in three dimensions. The artwork is 1.8 million times smaller than the real Earth, with every inch of the sculpture describing 4.4 miles of the Earth’s surface, according to the release.

Imagery for the artwork was compiled as a part of NASA’s Visible Earth series, according to the release. The project, called Blue Marble Next Generation, turns satellite data into digital images with a spatial resolution of 500 square meters per pixel.