* Astronomy

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RE: Griffith Park Observatory

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Griffith Park LA on Fire 5/8/07

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Leonard Nimoy -- best known as "Star Trek's" logical Mr. Spock -- wants the Griffith Observatory to go where no observatory has gone before. So he became one of the staunchest advocates of the landmark's mammoth renovation and expansion project, along with his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, donating $1 million toward its new Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon theatre. The auditorium, housed in a circular drum clad in perforated metal panels, is so elegantly futuristic it could serve as a set for the planned "Star Trek XI" film, which will not involve Nimoy.

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Griffith Observatory officially reopens its doors to the public Friday, November 3, 2006, after completing a comprehensive and ambitious $93 million renovation and expansion project, it was announced today by Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Mayor of the City of Los Angeles. The Observatory has been closed since January 6, 2002, to carry out the project that has been enabled by a singularly successful public-private partnership between the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks, which owns and operates the facility, and Friends Of The Observatory (FOTO), the Observatory's non-profit support organization.

The reopening of the Los Angeles cultural landmark, located on Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park, will generate an unprecedented public demand for access. To address this, City and Observatory officials also outlined details of the temporary "By Reservation Only" visitor access program, which will ensure a high quality visitor experience through a timed-entry reservation and shuttle system.

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Four years in the making, the $93 million makeover of Griffith Park Observatory in the city of Los Angeles, US, is nearly complete.
Scheduled to open this autumn, the 71-year-old Beaux Arts icon has been painstakingly preserved, its Art Deco designs burnished after 70 million visitors.
The building that houses the world's most visited public telescope atop Mount Hollywood has also been doubled in size to include 40,000 square feet of exhibit space.

On Tuesday, Ed Krupp, director of the observatory, led a tour that included Friends of the Observatory - which raised a third of the cost - and Los Angeles architects Stephen Johnson and Brenda Levin, who oversaw the restoration.

Position: Latitude: 34.118367° Longitude: -118.300359°

The land on which the observatory sits was donated to the City of Los Angeles by Col. Griffith J. Griffith in 1896. In his will, Griffith donated funds to build an observatory, exhibit hall, and planetarium on the donated land. Construction began on June 20, 1933 using a design developed by architect John C. Austin based on preliminary sketches by Russell W. Porter. The observatory and accompanying exhibits were officially opened on May 14, 1935. In its first five days of operation the observatory logged more than 13,000 visitors. Dinsmore Alter was the museum's director in it's first years.

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