Return to the Observatory

This past Sunday found both Corrie and I off and on an adventure to Griffith Observatory. It was her first time. The day was gray with patchy sun breaking through, but mostly dreary.



How much good do you think this telescope will do?



Here's one of the domes with the Hollywood sign:



From the distance, looking back, the two different planes that house the separate telescope domes and the planetarium dome can be seen here:



We learned a lot about our Solar System in the downstairs learning center. There was a computer program called "IMPACT!" that let you choose an object, it's size, density, velocity, and the angle that it would be headed towards Earth from beyond.

Some of the different objects were comet, space detritus, and meteor. First we chose a 20 meter nickel-iron meteor of the highest density with angle of twenty degrees. The screen changes to a simulation of how the fireball would look: a bright streak blazes across the horizon, an impact occurs, and then the scene was an overgrown crater with the words "Decades Later". The result showed how large the crater would be and how long it would take to get back to some semblance of normalcy.

Then we wanted to have a little fun. We maxed out the size of the nickel-iron meteor--50 meters--maxed out the velocity and density, and set the angle at 90 degrees, meaning it would hit the planet like an arrow and a bull's-eye.

The simulation takes the vantage point where the entire planet earth is visible. The explosion was so bright it whited out the screen. The resulting crater was as large as Mexico, and the overgrowth had begun, and the caption said "Millenia Later."

Thousands of years it would take to get some life back to the reshaped area of the planet. Crazy.

I brought our Holga camera, but this time with the black and white film. We'll see how the pictures come out. Another neat thing about this trip will be the subject of the next post, going to a planetarium show.