Griffith Observatory

I can't believe I didn't put together any decent blog posts about this, but apparently I wasn't very bloggy in the past.  I did post this picture, which I guess is better than nothing.

Way back in January 2009, AAS was in Long Beach, and then I was going to spend a month in Santa Barbara taking part in a globular cluster program at the Kavli institute there.  It was starting on Monday the 12, and AAS ended on Friday the 9th.  This left me with a weekend to kill in Los Angeles.  I think I've made my opinion of LA clear in the past.  Since I don't really have any interest in Hollywood crap, or beaches, or...gangland violence (? I'm sure LA has a third thing), I went to the one thing that did interest me:

Griffith Observatory:

Griffith Observatory.

It's not really able to do much useful science, since the light pollution from LA washes out pretty much everything, but it's transitioned into a wonderful museum.  Plus, it's wonderfully Art Deco inside (I might post those pictures in another three and a half years), so that's nice.

Anyway, the point of this post is to point out the pinhole camera that they have at the observatory.  In the picture above, you can see a little cylinder projecting up from the roof to the left of the central dome.  That has a motorized pinhole that rotates around in a circle and projects the image back through a series of mirrors.

First, let's take a look at what you can see around Griffith Observatory.

The Hollywood sign.

Downtown LA.

Now, inside the observatory, there's a darkened room that has a large white table that the pinhole camera projects down on. I was able to get these images:

Downtown LA. You can match the buildings to the image above.

Hollywood sign.  

Since the pinhole rotates, the apparent horizon of the image rotates around the table as well.  That's why the buildings and sign have the sky pointing in different directions.

It wouldn't be a good post if I didn't include a lunch picture:

If I remember correctly, this sandwich cost like $12 or something.  It was a decent enough sandwich, but I really doubt that Wolfgang Puck had much input into the thing. "Let's put some lettuce on it, and pair it with mustard! Brilliant!"