Front Page Archives - Fort Collins Museum of Discovery

November 2025 Happenings at FCMoD

Posted on November 1, 2025November 8, 2025 by Krystle in Front Page

Check out our upcoming events for the month of November! Click on the links provided for detailed information:

October 14 – November 16, 2025 – In celebration of Dia de Muertos, FCMoD is honored to welcome back mini alters, created and shared by members of the community, in honor of those who are no longer physically with us. This exhibit is on view during our regular business hours.
November 1, 2025 – From 11 AM to 1 PM the Northern Colorado Astronomical Society (NCAS) will be on-site with their solar telescopes to provide a safe way to observe our galaxy’s sun!
November 10, 2025 –Youth Open Mic Night from 5 PM to 8 PM For You By You is an Open Mic Night for emerging artists 22 and under. FCMoD invites participants to practice their songs, meet new band mates, and get involved in the local music scene with professional head shots and industry resources provided by FocoMA. Entry is free and instruments are provided. Find your voice, Find your people, and Find your stage!
November 19, 2025 – The Musician Town Hall (5:30 PM – 8 PM) provides a venue for music leaders from across the Front Range to talk about what’s happening in their music scenes. Make connections with musicians, enjoy free dinner, and let’s hear about ways to make the greater music scene stronger for all. This is a free event, but please sign up by clicking the link above.
November 21, 2025 – This Monthly Member Night from 5 PM to 8PM, we will be collecting food and clothing donations in partnership with Homeward Alliance. Please see the list of acceptable items in the Monthly Member Night link above. Free entry for members (*general public who bring one donation item per person can gain free entry for this event).
November 22, 2025 – Join us for a live local music performance in the Woodward Special Exhibition Gallery, featuring Zimbabwean musician, singer, and songwriter Blessing “Bled” Chimanga. Tickets are $22 pre-sale, $25 week of the event. Doors will open at 6:30 PM and the performance will start at 7:00 PM.
November 24, 2025 – Bring your friends! Bring your family! The museum will be open from 9 AM to 5 PM this Monday for Thanksgiving Break! *Please note: Dome shows will be unavailable on November 24 and November 25 due to scheduled maintenance. Thank you for your understanding.
November 27, 2025 – The museum will be closed for Thanksgiving. We will re-open on Friday for our regular business hours.

Event dates and times are subject to change, please check our museum calendar for the most up-to-date information.

August 2025 Happenings at FCMoD

Posted on August 21, 2025August 21, 2025 by Krystle in Front Page

We have a few great events for the month of August! Click the links below for specific dates and times. Here’s a quick round up:

August 26, 2025 – Tuesday Night Live: Bring Nature to the City and be a Habitat Hero! While the Nature All Around Us exhibit is almost done, you can continue to bring and keep nature all around you and your community and be a hero for wildlife habitat right here in Fort Collins! Come learn how to support birds, pollinators, and other wildlife in your own yard, patio, and community spaces with the City of Fort Collins Nature in the City program and the Audubon Rockies’ Habitat Hero program. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
August 29, 2025 – Party Like it’s 1999 in the Dome Theater with showings at 6:30 and 8:00 pm. Meet fellow fans, participate in a fun craft, dress up for our photo booth, and listen to your favorite Prince tracks in full surround sound paired with mind-melting overhead projections. Snacks for purchase, cash bar and mocktails available too!
August 31, 2025 – This is the last day to come see Nature All Around Us!

It’s a great time to come visit the museum!

Event dates and times are subject to change, please check our museum calendar for the most up-to-date information.

Nature Photographers All Around Us Photo Contest!

Posted on June 27, 2025June 27, 2025 by Bryan Simpson in Front Page

Calling all photographers!

FCMoD is hosting a nature photography contest and 15 people will win a free Membership! The Nature Photographers All Around Us Photo Contest celebrates the rich biodiversity of our area and the camera skills of our community. This friendly competition encourages you to get out in nature and take pics with whatever camera/phone you have at hand. In keeping with the themes of our special exhibition, Nature All Around Us, we’ll have five submission categories (Yards & Gardens, Urban Forests, Parks & Open Spaces, Rivers & Streams, Main Street) and three age brackets (youth 12 years and under, teens aged 13-19 and adult 20+).

The top submission in each category/bracket will win a free year-long Membership to the museum! That’s 15 Memberships up for grabs!

Submissions process is open now through July 20th!

Learn more and submit photos HERE.

June Events at FCMoD

Posted on June 18, 2025June 20, 2025 by Bryan Simpson in Front Page

We’ve got many great opportunities to come engage at FCMoD this month. Click the links below for specific dates and times. Here’s a quick round up:

June 19^th, 2025 – Museum Closed
June 20^th, 2025 – Member Appreciation Party! At FCMoD, we are always very grateful for our members, so please join us for a night of nature-themed fun to thank you for your support. We invite you and your loved ones to enjoy snacks (limited on a first-come, first-serve basis), drinks, and tons of family-friendly activities. We can’t wait to celebrate with you!
June 25^th, 2025 – Bike to Work Day – City of Fort Collins Stop by the museum on your ride to work to grab a little treat and enter to win some great prizes.
June 27^th, 2025 – Tickets are still available for the Pink Pony Party featuring the music of Chappell Roan with showings at 6:30 and 8:00 pm. Meet fellow fans, dress up for our photobooth, and listen to your favorite Chappell Roan tracks in full surround sound paired with mind-melting overhead projections in the Otterbox Digital Dome.

Our Black-footed Ferret Feedings happen the first and third Saturday of every month starting at 9:30 am. At 10am on the second and fourth Saturday every month you can Meet the Animals in our live animal exhibits. Every Saturday at 1pm you can stop by for “Tonight’s Sky” a live presenter Planetarium Show exploring what planets and constellations we’ll see in our region this month. And as always, we’ve got Dome Shows six days a week in the Otterbox Digital Dome Theater all month long.

It’s a great time to come visit the museum!

Event dates and times are subject to change, please check our museum calendar for the most up-to-date information.

Tuesday Night Live June 24th – Colorado’s Groundwater: Our Hidden Treasure

Posted on June 18, 2025June 18, 2025 by Bryan Simpson in Front Page

Digital Earth: Colorado’s Groundwater: Our Hidden treasure

Fort Collins Museum of Discovery Tuesday 24 June 2025

Join us on for Colorado’s Groundwater: Our Hidden Treasure, another mesmerizing Tuesday Night Live event on June 24^th when we present Colorado’s Groundwater: Our Hidden Treasure. KaChun Yu and Bob Raynolds of the Denver Museum of Science & Nature will reveal Colorado’s best kept water secret – groundwater! Yu and Raynolds will introduce us to Colorado’s Ogallala and Araphoe aquifers – finite resources that are rapidly diminishing. Using immersive imagery, we will discuss where this is heading and how these resources can be managed more sustainably.

The Ogallala aquifer irrigates corn used as feedstock for cattle, pigs and ethanol plants. In the 1930’s farmers hoped rain would follow the plow, but their square fields dried up and blew away with the wind. Discovery of the Ogallala, coupled with center pivot and centrifugal pump technology, allowed green crop circles to appear. Falling water levels, coupled with diminished flows and obligations to downstream states are forcing abandonment of these center pivot wells. The farming culture and economy is on the cusp of a transition to non-irrigated, no-till farming. This will involve high tech precision ag and farm consolidation. The circular fields are reverting to squares. Our program features space and ground-based imagery of these patterns.

South of Denver, the 2000 feet deep Arapahoe aquifer occurs in a buried alluvial fan that fed into the Denver Basin 68 million years. Water pumped from this aquifer allowed the rapid growth of communities like Parker and Castle Rock. Water levels fell precipitously (up to 30 feet per year) until the aquifer transitioned from confined to unconfined conditions.

Continued fall and dwindling production rates will increase pumping costs. Alternative sources of water will need to be found. High tech water recycling coupled with conservation and regional cooperation are already showing the way.

This talk features 3D modeling of the aquifer and discussions of geologic settings in Bolivia that furthered our understanding of the subsurface geology and geometry of this important aquifer.

This event is Pay What You Can. Please register HERE.

See you at the Museum!

Get Ready for City Nature Challenge!

Posted on April 15, 2025April 16, 2025 by Finn Smith in Adults, Any Age, Earth & Space Science, Front Page, Life Science

At the end of this month, Fort Collins will be participating in City Nature Challenge; are you ready?

City Nature Challenge is a friendly competition between cities all over the world to see who can rally their population to log the most observations in iNaturalist in a set period of time. This year, City Nature Challenge is happening from April 25-28.

Joining the Fort Collins City Nature Challenge team is easy!

Download the iNaturalist app
1. Optional: You can also download Seek by iNaturalist, which has an in-app camera that helps identify species you point it at, and connects to your iNaturalist account
Get outside the weekend of April 25th
Upload pictures of plants, animals, bugs, or fungus to your iNaturalist account

Any observations uploaded to iNaturalist from within Fort Collins city limits between April 25th-28th will automatically count toward our score.

You can visit the City Nature Challenge project in iNaturalist by clicking here for all the details.

To learn more about how to use iNaturalist to contribute to ongoing biodiversity research, click through the link below!

iNaturalist and Participatory Science

If you’d prefer a hands-on tutorial, click here to sign up for our free iNaturalist workshop on Sunday, April 20th

FoCoMX 2025 @ FCMoD

Posted on April 9, 2025April 14, 2025 by Scott McKinney in FoCoMX, Front Page, Uncategorized

We are days away from Fort Collins’ favorite local music festival, FoCoMX! With over 400 Colorado bands performing on 38 stages, you are sure to find you new favorite local artist. This year, FCMoD is hosting even more stages, bands, and fun!

Join us for a Friday Night for a special edition of our Monthly Member Night, where both Museum Members and FoCoMX wristband holders can listen to live music and have fun in our gallery. The Otterbox Digital Dome Theater will be filled to the brim with some of our favorite folk artists, while The Launchpad Stage in the gallery will be hosting some local favorites and a few awesome emerging artists. And don’t forget to stop by our Music Garage and Jam out with our friends the Boredom Fighters.

And then join us again on Saturday for a full day of fun with FOUR stages of youth music! Our youth advisory board, The MoD Squad will help run three unique stages: The Launchpad, The Learning Labs, and The Otterbox Digital Dome Theater. This year we will also be hosting an additional fourth stage on our rooftop featuring the crowd favorite School of Rock House Band!

The MoD Squad consists of individuals ages 15-19 from across the Front Range. Squad members meet twice a month at the museum for a one-year period. During that time, they actively engage the community in a variety of ways, including reviewing applications for the Sonic Spotlight Showcase, participating in college level presentations and discussions, emceeing concerts, and much more. This year, MoD Squad members will also be helping out behind the scenes of FoCoMX at the museum.

Months ago, Squad members got a sneak peek into the FoCoMX application process. After intently looking over applications from a variety of different bands, MoD Squad had the opportunity to weigh in on which bands would thrive on FCMoD stages. Now, after becoming these bands’ newest fans, Squad members will help ensure the success of the festival by supporting backstage.

Want to see the MoD Squad in action? We’ve got you covered. Thanks to Dellenbach Motors and Visit Fort Collins, admission to the museum is FREE on Saturday, April 19^th. Add Fort Collins Museum of Discovery to your 2025 FoCoMX schedule and don’t forget to say hello to the Squad!

Thanks to:

Autism Resource Fair – April 6th

Posted on March 26, 2025March 26, 2025 by Bryan Simpson in Front Page, Uncategorized

April 6th, 2025 11 AM – 4 PM

The Fort Collins Autism Resource Fair is a free, annual event hosted by Fort Collins Museum of Discovery that provides information and support for the autism community in and around Fort Collins.

Enjoy activities for people of all ages including arts and crafts, games, face painting, Lego building, social meetups, character meet and greet, parent supports, food trucks, and much more! 

ASD-trained students from Colorado State University are available for childcare assistance under faculty supervision at no cost so that families and caregivers can interact with providers.  

We are also honored to welcome world-famous scientist and bestselling author and advocate, Dr. Temple Grandin, who will give a talk in the OtterBox Digital Dome Theater.  She will also be available to autograph books (including her newest, Visual Thinking).  

Additionally, we are honored to be showcasing the new documentary, An Open Door, in the Dome Theater, celebrating the mind and works of Dr. Temple Grandin. A Q&A panel with the filmmakers will follow.

Neurodiverse individuals and their loved ones are encouraged to explore the museum and share a day of fun. Let us help you find out more about the autism community of Fort Collins! 

Among the providers included this year are: 
The Arc of Larimer County 
CAYAC  
Foothills Gateway 
Colorado State University 
Peak Parenting Center 
Poudre School District 
The Social Learning Project 
And many more! 

*Free admission for all. The 2025 Autism Resource Fair is generously sponsored by Larimer County Behavioral Health Services Impact Fund Grant Program.

March Calendar at FCMoD!

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Scott McKinney in Front Page, Uncategorized

We’ve got many great opportunities to come engage at FCMoD this month. Click the links below for specific dates and times. Here’s a quick round up:

We still have slots open for our Museum Explorers Spring Break Camp happening March 17th-21st.
Museum Explorers Camp provides a behind-the-scenes, all-access pass to everything at FCMoD. Campers will have opportunities for a hands-on exploration of music, live animals, science, local history, and more all while making friends and having fun. Each day we will dive into several activities designed to engage kids’ curiosity and creativity.
Our Monthly Member Night theme for March is “Equinox” taking place on March 21^st. Members are encouraged to bring their friends – and come space out for the spring equinox.
Tickets are still available for the “Diva Dance Party: Featuring the Music of Beyoncé” on March 28^th. Check out your favorite Beyoncé tracks in full surround sound paired with mind-melting overhead projections in the Otterbox Digital Dome.

It’s a great time to come visit the museum!

Event dates and times are subject to change, please check our museum calendar for the most up-to-date information.

Meet our Digital Experiences Manager, Scott McKinney, the Wizard behind the curtain in our Otterbox Digital Dome Theater!

Posted on February 6, 2025February 6, 2025 by Bryan Simpson in Front Page, Uncategorized

Scott McKinney
Digital Experiences Manager
FCMoD

What does the Digital Experiences Manager do here at FCMoD?Primarily I take care of our Otterbox Digital Dome Theater and that includes everything from picking out what shows to run, doing maintenance on our computer systems, to making sure everything runs perfectly, assuring quality control on our projectors and video files. I also work on our interactive exhibits and our website.

What do you look for when booking new shows for the dome?I try to cover a wide variety of bases, and we have everything from easy access points like the Big Bird show, which is called “One World, One Sky, Big Bird’s Adventure” which is all about finding the north star and sharing a communal experience of stargazing around the world.

We also focus on shows that are more science-heavy like “Forward to the Moon” which talks all about the Artemis missions. We have “Mars: The Ultimate Voyage” which talks all about the scientific challenges it would take to get to Mars.

And we’ve got some cool new shows on our radar, one of which is “Super Volcanoes” Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch (Smaug from the Hobbit Films) talking all about super volcanoes. Another fun one is “Orbital” which is half scientific, half philosophical and it’s all about the Overview Effect which is what astronauts describe as the experience of first seeing the earth from space. It’s about getting that holistic view of the planet and how it changes your mindset on earth’s ecosystems, but also where we fall within the grand scheme of the universe.

How many shows are we running?On our weekday schedule we have five shows a day, three in the morning and two in the afternoon. On the weekends we have at least six shows, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. We get a little more variety in the weekend – our afternoon includes music shows so you can come see some of your favorite artists

What shows do we offer bilingually?
We have two shows available in Spanish right now, we offer “One World One Sky” in Spanish, “Un Cielo, Un Mundo”, and we also offer “Accidental Astronauts” in Spanish. We’re working on adding more titles in Spanish on the horizon as well.

Let’s talk about the after-hours music shows in the dome.
So, one of our goals with after-hours programming was to find different ways for people to bring their passion into the building and share it with their loved ones – that includes musical experiences. So, the first couple shows we’ve done have been Taylor Swift. It’s a cool celebration for the fans.

On top of what’s happening in the dome, we also have things like trivia and costume contests and craft activities. Inside the dome we have an hour of music from our fans’ favorite artists all remixed into surround sound with really cool overhead visuals that interact with the music. It’s a fun way to experience your favorite artist in a new way and introduce your friends and family to music you love.

How do you build these shows where you’re composing visuals set to music?
First step is building out a play list, so we interview the staff and ask members of the community what their favorite songs are from the artist. From there, we build a playlist that I cross reference with their concert set lists, so you get some of their tour favorites in there. There’s always a classic closing song that you want to hear at the end of a set.

Once we have our playlist set, I remix the files from stereo to surround sound for the dome. After that I start working on the visuals. I try to give each song a set of visual themes and break that down into verse/chorus/verse so that the patterns of the visuals match the patterns of the music – which is really fun because when you’re building up to the moment, you know the words and you’re singing along and it just kind of hits you differently.

What’s the vibe like at these evening shows?
Our Taylor Swift show was a big party – there were people dancing on the floor, a lot of parents in the seats singing along and there’s a couple moments in the show where you realize the effect this music has had… you start to realize this really is a classic. Seeing how much other people love music really reminds you how much you love music yourself, and it creates a sense of community and a bond with everyone around you. It lets you peel off that shy layer of being a true fan of something and allows you to just be yourself and enjoy music.

What’s your favorite part of the job?

My favorite part of the job is the problem-solving. Even though it stresses me out the most, it has the most reward. So, when we deal with moments when something is not working quite right, there’s a real joy in solving the puzzle and getting it to come together. It’s fun to solve a problem and have somebody react with “Yes! This is something I’ve been needing!”