Griffith Observatory

Today, Lou and I drove to the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park.  The mini-history (which we learned from Leonard Nimoy in a presentation at a theater in the Observatory) was that Griffith J. Griffith got rich in LA real estate in the late 1800s and donated 3000 acres to the city for the park.  About this time California was becoming a center of astronomy. Griffith had an opportunity to observe another telescope and became hooked on the science.  In his will he funded the Observatory which opened in 1935.  It was intended to be an observatory, an exhibition hall and a planetarium.

It’s in the hills north of Hollywood, not too far from the Hollywood sign.  We drove up, then had to turn around and leave because the parking lot was full.  We found a space about 1/4^th mile back down the hill.

Here are some pictures from the drive up and from the front courtyard:

When entering, the first thing you see is (hold on – I have to look up how to spell this) the Foucault pendulum – a demonstration of earth’s rotation – something I remember seeing at the Smithsonian as a kid.  It was cool to see it again.

Lou and I bought tickets to the planetarium show (very cheap at $7 each) “Centered in the Universe”.  It’s a basic overview of the universe – a great visual treat.  Next we walked around the exhibits, pausing longer at a few:  meteorites, classifications of stars, the representation of the relative sizes of the planets, the Tesla coil demonstration, etc.  We also watched a short film with Leonard telling us about the history of the observatory.  The film was shown in the Leonard Nemoy Event horizon Theater which was built underground, under the front courtyard (in 2002).  

One wall of a large room holds a (looking this up) 152 foot by 20 foot picture of a very small segment of sky (see http://bigpicture.caltech.edu/).  Leonard tells us the segment of sky pictured is about the same as the length and width of your finger held 18 inches from your face.  It’s 1/1357^th of the entire sky.  The image shows 500,000 stars in the Milky Way, and about 100,000,000 other galaxies (each with an average of 100,000,000,000 stars).  I stopped counting at 11 (I read that in a tour book)

Here's a picture of the telescope in the left tower:

We had lunch at the café there, sitting outside looking over the cityscape.  The view is spectacular.  We spent a lot of time admiring the view.

The building is featured in a lot of films.  They noted: “Rebel Without a Cause” and a few others.  Check out the Wiki entry:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffith_Observatory.