Tellus Science Museum
# Tellus Science Museum

Tellus Science Museum is a natural history and science museum near Cartersville, Georgia with a facility of over 120,000 square feet. It is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is open daily from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM closing only on major holidays, and entrance fees vary. The museum also has multiple special events scheduled throughout the year, many revolving around the Bentley Planetarium and observatory facility. The largest displays consist of a very large fossil exhibit and mineral gallery.

## Facility contents

* Weinman Mineral Gallery
* Fossil Gallery with well-detailed casts of Mesozoic land and marine creatures
* Millar Science in Motion Gallery exhibiting past and modern transportation displays
* Collins Family My Big Backyard exhibiting hands on experiments with light, sound, magnetism and electricity.
* Bentley Planetarium
* Observatory with a 20-inch Planewave reflecting telescope and a Coronado solar scope
* Theater
* Banquet Halls
* The Vault sub gallery featuring local mineral, paleontological and archeological treasures
* The Crossroads Gallery featuring recent to modern marvels
* West Virginia University Solar House built by university students for the 2015 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

## History

Tellus was founded as the Weinman Mineral Museum in 1983, which closed in 2007 and reopened as Tellus Science Museum in 2009. The museum retains the original mineral displays in the Weinman Mineral Gallery.

