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| Space is number one |
I have been to the observatory a couple times with friends. We would swing through the inside real quick and then proceed to spend most of our time there looking out over LA. Man is that a good view, especially tonight because the storm blew all of the smog out of town so you could see for miles. It was as clear as I have ever seen it. This time was a bit different for me because I spent the majority of my time inside the actual observatory looking at all of the cool displays. One of my favorites had to have been the giant clock right at the entrance. I must have waited around and watched very intently to see the pendulum knock over one of the little cylindrical shapes, I have to tell you it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be.
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| Some cool planets |
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| Cool View of the Solar System |
The reason I spent more time inside this time was because of our last unit about space. It got me very curious and I thought what better place to go to than an observatory. One of my other favorite displays was the tesla coil, I really like it because it was loud and seeing all of the electricity flying was something I had not experienced before. Getting more into the space realm of things they had this really cool thing that allowed you to look at the surface of the sun. I didn't think that this would be made possible in a public setting, I always thought that I would have to spend at least five dollars in order to enjoy something like that. Unfortunately when we got there the line to look through the telescope was so long we wouldn't have time to go look through it. I did do some reading about the telescope and it's bigger than i could have ever imagined!
Looking out over LA once it go dark got me thinking. I was in Oregon a couple summers ago and when you looked up in the sky at night you could see every star, planet and galaxy imaginable. It as amazing. When I looked up in the sky over LA it just wasn't the same, I could count the stars in the sky on one hand. It just made me wonder how the people that chose to put the observatory here so long ago feel about it today. It's crazy how light pollution just erases everything from the night sky. After learning more about space I want to go back and look through the telescope, Ive seen planets through friends telescopes but it just has to look so much different through an actual device made to look thousands of miles into the sky. It is just a little reminder as to how small we really are.
