Most tourists come to Los Angeles to see movie stars, but as I am not a tourist, and as I am not most people, I really wanted to see stars. Yes, stars: those burning, shining things in space. On an average Westwood night, it’s impossible to see a single star in the sky. Thanks, electricity and smog.
Unfortunately, seeing actual, brilliant, beautiful stars is a rather difficult feat in Los Angeles (or in any city, really), so Griffith Observatory, one of Los Angeles’ more well-known attractions apart from Hollywood and Beverly Hills, seemed an appropriate substitute.
Griffith Observatory is north of Hollywood and looks like the Taj Mahal perched up on a giant cliff just behind Los Feliz Boulevard. Inside is the city’s biggest planetarium as well as exhibits featuring information about the planets, meteors and everything related to outer space.
I was never one of those kids who strove to be an astronaut (I reached more for the singer/princess type of career.), but sitting on the roof of a car on an abandoned nighttime road where the collection of stars illuminates the landscape beneath, and the stars are so varied and textured that they seem almost like strings of tangled beads in the sky was, and still is, awe-inspiring.
Alas, ask anyone to find an abandoned rural turnout in L.A. and they would only laugh (heartily) and advise you to carry some pepper spray and a good shanking implement. So, an observatory would simply have to do to fulfill this star craving of mine, even if the cool nighttime air and the panoramic view of stars in the sky simply cannot be replicated indoors.
A giant, swinging pendulum is the first thing that greets visitors at the observatory. Attached to a domed ceiling covered in a mural that emulates regal Italian Renaissance art, the golden pendulum moves not by its own accord and not by machine, but rather by the earth’s movements. A set of pegs sits beneath the pendulum’s needle and every fifteen minutes, the pendulum’s needle knocks down one of the pegs as a way to tell time.
While the physics beyond this phenomena of a pendulum tracking the earth’s movements and the passing of time escapes me (despite hearing one explanation from a friend majoring in computer science and one from a curator at the museum), the pendulum demonstrated how majestic the simple motions of the natural world could be and how blissfully unaware human creatures are living their daily lives barely thinking about what happens beyond our own realm of understanding.
Of course, it is for the better that we never worry about whether the earth is staying on orbit and whether the sun will keep shining (though I’m sure a few people exist like that in places with padded walls). However, the observatory’s exhibits, displayed in long echoing hallways with tall ceilings and domed roof corridors at each end of the building, show what’s happening in the natural world and how large and grand the elements are beyond our understanding.
It was the ambience more than the science that fascinated me at Griffith Observatory. Along each hallway was a series of rooms with different interactive display panels highlighting information about the planets, the solar system and the rest of the galaxy. My favorite of these rooms was one where visitors could see the observatory’s camera obscura, which is the predecessor of the modern-day camera. In a dark room with a small hole in the ceiling, an inverted image of the landscape around the observatory was projected on to a circular, white table where the image was traced. Although I had just been outside to see the panoramic views myself, seeing the projected image on the table made the area outside of us seem all the more distant and beautiful. It was a scene separated from its context as “a valley in Los Angeles,” and looking at it in (literally) a different light emphasized how stunning the scene really was.
Much to my disappointment, the stars I came to see shining in clear constellations on the roof of a domed ceiling cost extra money in the planetarium theater, and as a poor college student who had already forked over change for bus rides and an overpriced lunch at the food court, I deemed the half-hour “show” an unnecessary addition to the trip. However, to see images of the sun from outer space and views of what other planets looked like from earth, as well as fragments of meteors that hit earth on display, my celestial craving was satisfied. The observatory’s interactive exhibits may be targeted to kids and families, but my friends and I had just as much fun exploring facts about different planets, looking at slides of outer space images, and exploring the functioning seismograph on display in the museum.
While waiting for the bus outside the observatory, my friends and I took the time to enjoy the view from the top of the Hollywood Hills. The Hollywood sign was at eye-level and the whole of Downtown Los Angeles could be seen. This huge city seemed like something so far and untouchable, and yet we had just seen displays of outer space, where videos of the burning sun and the cool, abandoned moon emphasized just how different the galaxy is from our everyday existence.
Los Angeles is just one small part of this galaxy in which we live, and while average people don’t have the power (yet) to take a trip to space, at least we have this landscape in front of us, with winding roads, high-rise buildings, and sloping hills to explore.
If you also aspired for the singer/princess end of the spectrum, e-mail Cohn at jcohn@media.ucla.edu.