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Once I arrived to the Griffith Observatory, the first thing I saw was this big statue on the

front lawn in front of the Observatory. This statue is

known as the Astronomers Monument, it is there to

honor six of the greatest astronomers of all time. The six

figures are Hipparchus (125 B.C.), Nicolaus Copernicus

(1473-1543), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Johannes

Kepler (1571-1630), Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and

John Herschel (1738-1822). They are among the most

influential and important in history. Above the statue

there is a hollow bronze armillary sphere weighing 900

pounds. An armillary sphere is an astronomical

instrument used before the invention of the telescope. It was used by astronomers to determine

celestial position, the rings represent celestial latitude, longitude, and the ecliptic.

As I walked around the statue I noticed the sundial. It was very interesting because it

works similar to how a clock does. The sundial is used to track the movement of the shadow and

to keep the time using the Sun. The Sundial gives us a better

appreciation of the role of our rotating Earth as the fundamental

timekeeper.

As I was walking to the observatory entrance I saw the

planets positioned on the ground. After looking at them for a

while and walking to each planet I realized it was an accurate

model that represents the size of the orbits of the planets,

including pluto In our solar system. This model allowed me to

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better understand the distance each of the planets has between each other. Before walking in the

the observatory I admired the view of Los Angeles. I used one of the telescopes to get a closer

look at the city and try to see if i could

recognize places from far away. I also took a

look at the Hollywood sign.

The first thing I saw as I walked into

the

obser

vatory was the pendulum. The Pendulum is a 240

pound bronze ball that is suspended by a cable

mounted to a bearing in the rotunda ceiling that does

not turn with the building as it rotates with the Earth.

That allows it to swings in a constant direction while

the Earth turns beneath it. As the day goes on the pendulum knocks over pegs set up in the

pendulum pit and indicates the progress of rotation.

Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who observed that the redshift of galaxies

are directly proportional to the distance of the galaxy from earth. This means things farther away

from Earth are moving away faster. In simple words he was

saying that the universe must be expanding. He was the first

to demonstrate the existence of other galaxies besides the

Milky Way and changed the way we look at the universe.

The tesla coils is located on the first floor of the

observatory. The tesla is named after its inventor, eccentric

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genius Nikola Tesla. It converts low-voltage alternating current electricity to very high voltage

and increases the frequency. The main purpose of

the Tesla coil was the transmission of electricity

through the air without the use of wires. In the

1900 electricity became widely available when the

first networks began to send power to homes and

businesses over transmission lines. They were

expensive to build, and so Tesla and others worked

on wireless electrical networks. The technology

was difficult to implement, and it never got out of the laboratory.

The periodic table shows what elements are

found in the Big Bang, stars, Humans supernovae,

and in gases. Everything around us contains material

that was once part of a star. Hydrogen and helium

are the two most abundant elements that were made

in the Big Bang. Some of the elements on the

periodic table at the Griffith observatory have

samples of that particular element.

The Universes is filled with dust from comets and fragments of broken asteroids. As

Earth orbits pieces of them enter our atmosphere. The smaller ones burn up due to friction with

air molecules. The resulting flashes of light in the sky are meteors. Anything that survives the

trip and lands on the surface is then called a meteorite. Meteorites come from asteroids. They are

the remnants of smaller planetary bodies that formed at the same time, and out of the same basic
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material, as Earth and other rocky planets. There are three types

of meteorites, stony meteorites stony iron meteorites and iron

meteorites. Craters are the scars left on planetary landscapes by

impacts and collisions. Craters range from microscopic pits made

by very small projectiles to huge holes in the ground made by

very large objects.

The Moon is the Earth’s

only natural satellite and

was formed after the

formation of the solar

system. The Moon's orbit

distance is 384,400 km, it

takes the moon 27.3

days to orbit earth.

It has a diameter of 3,475 km, a mass of 7.35 × 10^22 kg

and a surface temperature of -233 to 123 °C .The first

unmanned mission to the Moon was in 1959 by the Soviet

Lunar Program with the first manned landing being Apollo

11 in 1969.

The display of all of the planets allowed me to

understand the size of each in relation to earth and their

unique properties. Weighing myselves on each planet let

me see the difference among all the planets and how each planet's properties play a role in
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that.Having the chance to create an earthquake allowed me to understand how earthquakes are

measured and what the device that measures them looks like. By jumping on the floor we were

able to see how much energy is actually takes in order to make an impact.

The top floor of the observatory has professional telescopes. It gave me the opportunity

to view the actual planets and stars, along with moons. I was very amazed by the things I saw.

The planetarium had to be my favorite part. While watching centered in the universe it felt like

the room was moving but it wasn't it was just the video. The show provided examples of the

constellations and what people used them in earlier times. It went through the history of the

universe from how it was formed the different people that contributed to astronomy and

explained things we know about the universe so far. It also talked about the possibility of there

being more life in the universe besides us humans.