Griffith Observatory

On Tuesday night, Rachel and I went out to Griffith Observatory to see the telescope and the sunset. We managed to pick the one fully cloudy day since we got here so far.

View from the Observatory

Rachel overlooking Hollywood

The infamous sign

 The Observatory, based in Griffith park, is very pretty ad art deco. I loved the architecture.

Griffith observatory.

Griffith park and LA

The dome, overlooking the city

 Apparently this is the worlds most looked through telescope and I think they do open it up on some nights. Obviously not that night though.

12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope

Posing by the dome

There was also a rotating periscope looking thing. We had no idea what it was as there were no signs. But had fun photographing ourselves in its mirror.

Can you see me?

The park at the Observatory is very pretty though it would have looked a lot nicer in the sun! (It actually rained here on Monday. Apparently it never rains in Pasadena and one person described it as a sign of the approaching apocalypse. My rain making power is unstoppable!)

Observartory

View of the grounds from the top of the dome.

There was also a rather random statue to James Dean. Apparently he filmed a lot of "Rebel without a Cause" on the Observatory grounds and shortly after it became a very popular spot to film at.

James Dean

 We also had fun inside the main building.

Thoughtful discussions with Einstein

Yes. yes. Very interesting

 I was really impressed with the displays. And super excited that in the planets area they had kept Pluto! One of the most popular activities were the scales which measures your weight on the different planets.

Fat on jupiter

Much prefer my weight on Pluto.

Rings of saturn

The main building was art deco inside too and the ceiling was obviously painted in an era of style, before astronomy budget cuts.

ceiling of the main building

 They also fired the Tesla coil which is always fun!

Tesla coil

 We did get to catch the sunset. Unfortunately this was as good as it got. We are planning on trying to catch the sunset over the see and hoping for better weather.

Sunset. Sort of.

But the view out of LA was really cool. You only really see how big it is when lit up.

LA at night 

The observatory

 Back at the flat, we had a late dinner of wine and some amazing cheese while watching Criminal Minds. We have some better wine but we are going to savor that on the weekend. The only bad point was when we tried to open a second bottle (as I had used most of the first cooking the night before). We have a rubbish corkscrew whig requires sheer muscle to get the cork out. And it didn't budget! So I need to buy a better corkscrew!

Cheese, wine, chocolate and raspberries for dinner! Yummy!