The theater is located beneath your feet as youwalk in the entrance of the original building-a fact you will never notice inthe manicured lawns and walkways. The"Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater" is a beautiful addition thatcurrently features a 23-minute presentation hosted by Nimoy himself on theobservatory and its renovation. The premiere presentation for the new planetarium is entitled,Centered in the Universe, and takes viewers through the history of astronomy asan Earth-centered universe, all the way to the latest cosmology of the Big Bangand where we truly sit in relation to everything else. Best of all is the removal of thewholly uncomfortable wooden-backed seats, replaced with luxurious reclinersthat would quickly put you to sleep if not for the exciting presentation aboveyour head. The new Zeiss Mark IX Universariumand Evans & Sutherland laser projection system are a far cry from the slideprojectors and Mark IV Zeiss starball of old. The"Samuel Oschin Planetarium" warps ahead of the original with aprojection system that brings full-motion video to the dome and unparalleledstar fields to show us all the night sky. The two most noticeable improvements are in thePlanetarium and theater. New exhibits on meteorites, the solar system, and the universe beyond,are all state-of-the-art. If you had been privy to this areaduring reconstruction, you would have seen the massive undertaking that includedlifting the entire building off its foundation without creating a single crack.This enabled workers to dig out the mountain underneath the original buildingto expand downward-a bizarre direction for a facility that wants us all to lookoutward to the universe!Īll of theexhibits were either removed or completely refurbished, changed, and updated.Old favorites such as the Foucault Pendulum that demonstrates Earth's rotation,art deco wall panels and ceiling fresco, or the giant Moon globe, remainintact. To enterthe grounds now gives little indication of all that has transpired since 2002.From the outside, very little has changed.
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