A bronze bust now pays homage to the highly regarded actor and stands just outside the domed building. A gift shop and The Café at the End of the Universe are also on the lower levels.Ĭompleted in 1935, it has always been a popular location for Hollywood shooting, beginning with the classic Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean. In this observatory section, you will find the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon, Gunther Depths of Space Exhibits, The Cosmic Connection, and The Edge of Space Exhibits. This observatory area was completed in 2006 as part of a $93-million project to expand and renovate the Griffith Observatory. Plus, three solar telescopes that allow visitors to see a live view of the sun.īelow the main building are two floors of fascinating exhibits. The Ahmanson Hall feature numerous exhibits, old and new. Directly across from the Wilder Hall is the Ahmanson Hall of the Sky. With state-of-the-art exhibits, a Tesla Coil, and a Camera Obscura.

Griffith, the man who donated the land now Griffith Park.Īlso in the original section of the Griffith Observatory is the Wilder Hall of the Eye.

High above the ceiling of the rotunda is an amazing mural by Hugo Ballin. Students and seniors get a discount.Īs you enter the Central Rotunda, the first thing you will see is one of the original exhibits, the Foucault pendulum. Show tickets may be purchased only at the Observatory, only for that day’s shows. There are eight shows each weekday, and ten shows each weekend day. Parking around the observatory costs $8 an hour, but there’s also a DASH bus that you can catch from Los Feliz for only 50 cents.The Griffith Observatory Planetarium has a star projector, laser digital projection system, 290 seats, sound system. And there are above-par snacks in the Café at the End of the Universe. The Gunther Depths of Space contains crisp descriptions of the planets, a bronze of Albert Einstein and a vast, 2.46-gigapixel image of the night sky taken from the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. Pieces of the Sky documents, brightly and informatively, the impact made on Earth by meteorites and other falling debris. And downstairs, accessible via the campy displays of space-slanted jewelry in the Cosmic Connection Corridor, you’ll find a number of other new exhibits.Īt the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater, you can see a short film about the history and resurgence of the observatory.

The ground floor holds the Hall of the Sky and Hall of the Eye, a pair of complementary displays that focus on humans’ relationship to the stars a Foucault pendulum, directly under Hugo Ballin’s famed mural on the central rotunda and the handsome, high-tech Samuel Oschin Planetarium.

You could comfortably spend an hour or two here just taking in the exhibits and the shows. The Art Deco architecture looks attractive from any angle, as do the views of the city below. Famous for its appearances in movies both acclaimed ( Rebel Without a Cause) and disdained ( Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace), this icon is simply a must-visit on any trip to L.A.-and arguably the one landmark locals never get tired of. The star attraction remains the building itself, both inside and out. But catching a fuzzy glimpse of Saturn or the moon through that 12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope is simply magic. “If every person could look through that telescope,” declared Griffith J Griffith, “it would revolutionize the world.” Nearly nine decades after this iconic building opened, the world remains unrevolutionized, and the smog means that the views probably aren’t as crystal-clear as they were in Griffith’s day.

Griffith observatory view