Revisiting an Old Friend

We were treated to a sneak preview reception last night at the Griffith Park Observatory (it opens to the public Nov. 3). They’ve done a pretty nice job with the place.

Walking up to the exterior, it looks exactly the same, but there’s an entire new wing…underground. It was built, incredibly, both under the existing structure and underneath the landscaping in front of the building. I have no idea how they managed that one.

The new hall is very attractive, very slick. On one wall - extending from the floor to the ceiling, and the entire length of the room (maybe 150 feet across) – is a blown-up image from Hubble’s Deep Field eye, with stars and galaxy clusters galore. It’s breathtaking. Directly across from that, floating out from a wall, are the 9 planets (Pluto retaining full status, apparently) and they’re in perfect scale to each other (in terms of size, not orbital distance). As I walk in and see them I let out an “Oh shit, they’re in scale!” and this docent walks by and goes “Yep! And so is the Leonard Nimoy Theater!”, pointing to a curved wall at the end of the hall. She explains: it’s a circular theater, and its diameter is that of the Sun, in scale to the hanging planets. WOW. (The staff, by the way, was friendly, knowledgeable and enthusiastic around every corner. It almost seemed as if they’d been waiting patiently for four years to return to the greatest job in the world.) There are a number of wall displays, some with simple text, others with audio/visual presentations, and yet others with hands-on interactive models. For instance, there is a see-through Lucite orb with a liquid-/gel-like orange substance within – when you spin it, the liquid flows in swirls of turbulence, modeling the flow of gases within Jupiter’s band. The child spinning it and catching it and spinning it again couldn’t get enough.

You then walk up a flight of stairs and, voila, you’re in the main rotunda with the pendulum swing (they restored all the original murals from the ‘30s in here and they look great). Unfortunately, you realize at this point that the new additions – in terms of exhibition space – aren’t that significant. The downstairs hall is definitely cool, but it only covers the solar system, and the Universe has lots to offer beyond the solar system. The room to the east of the rotunda has a new exhibit covering, on one side, light wavelengths (ie spectrometry) and, on the other, telescopes and the history of astronomers - ie Galileo, Kepler, Brahe and more of what you would expect here. There are some cool 3-D/holographic dioramas, but overall the room’s kind of whatever (although one end of it was still under construction). Here, like downstairs, a number of the displays and placards were still not done/posted, and plenty of the A/V buttons and what not didn’t work yet. Hopefully, once everyone’s up and running as it should be, kids or whomever can get lost in the displays for hours (although, that definitely wasn’t our experience last night).

The planetarium was closed, but I ducked my head in and it’s incredible. They yanked out those atrocious, WWII-era theater seats (complete with gimpy wooden headrests) and replaced them with lush, full-reclining theater/airplane seats. The theater is no longer in the round: everyone pretty much faces the same direction now. They also - I read this on a placard – replaced the old star projector with the newest, coolest one money could buy, so the shows in there should be great. Except that…

…they killed the Laserium! It’s never coming back. I spoke to a docent about it and it’s dead. I was mourning its loss when this attractive mother comes running over, having overheard: “Nooo!! I loved the Laserium! Back in the 70s, I used to come here with a date – lots of dates! – and we’d get hammered and the shows were just sooo cool.” “Me too!” I said. The three of us laughed, while the woman’s kids simply looked at us like WTF.

They added a Wolfgang Puck café downstairs on the west side of the building. The best part of this is the terrace overlooking the whole of the Westside. We arrived just after sunset and the view was spectacular – the sky was all crazy colors and we could see the ocean. That terrace would be a perfect spot for a date, or even just for a relaxing meal/drink.

Once it got dark, we headed up to the roof. In all my years of going up there, this was by far the clearest night I’d ever seen. The city was sparkling like no other – it looked like it’d been restored like the murals inside. It was almost eerie. The main telescope was open, but the line was ridiculously long, and they were only looking at Vega. Trivia: what does a one-dimensional dot look like up real close?..a one-dimensional dot. Our friends who insisted on waiting in line later confirmed this phenomenon, much to their chagrin. The rest of us went down below to a terrace just below the main roof and looked through a far smaller telescope (no wait!) through which we saw an open cluster in Cassiopeia. The volunteer called it the ET cluster because it, allegedly, looks like ET. She got a good laugh out of that one…many, many times. I personally didn’t see the little the waddling brown guy up there, but whatever…

Out front, down from the main entrance, are concentric circles drawn into the concrete, each with a metal placard. It turns out these are the orbits of the planets in our solar system, again in scale. If you look closely, you can actually tell that they’re ellipses and not circles. The docent (on hand to wish us goodbye) didn’t believe me, but then I bent down and measured the differences between each of the sides and she got a good schooling for free. There are the first four planets’ orbits real tight within a few feet of each other, but then you have to walk a good 10-15 feet to find Jupiter’s orbit and another 10 or so for Saturn’s, etc. Pluto, apparently, is way off across the concourse, next to the newly installed bust of James Dean. Pretty cool.

The biggest bummer about the whole thing is that, for the time being, there is no free public access to the site. We had to board buses at the Greek and get taken up and then back down, which is considerably better than what they’re apparently going to make the public do come November. Supposedly, everyone will have to book an appointment ahead of time, and then take a shuttle from Hollywood & Highland up there – no one will be allowed to drive up, period. Hollywood & Highland?! Could they choose a farther, more impacted meet-up point? It almost seems like a deterrent measure to me. Anyway, according to the website, this process will be a temporary fixture of the opening months. Once things settle down, they say they’ll consider dropping the appointment procedure - no word if we’ll ever be allowed to freely drive up there again, though. So sad, because this place was always a public landmark, one best visited spontaneously on a beautiful, meandering evening. They’re definitely deflating the experience somewhat.

Still, $93 million later, it’s absolutely worth a peek.