Tuesday, April 23, 2024

April 2024 A-Z Challenge: U.S. Travel Chronicles [UCLA]

#244



Tucked away within the geology department of the University of California Los Angeles, famously known as UCLA, lies its meteorite gallery. How did we stumble upon this during our LA trip? It was listed as a must-see in Google Maps!


Driving through LA traffic, it wasn't easy to get there. Fortunately, we made it in time - 4:15PM - and had 45 minutes to leisurely browse through the entire gallery before it closed at 5PM.


Yet another aspect of luck - we ended up listening to a who we thought was a UCLA professor share with some of the students there about the origins of some of these meteorites and talk about rock formations in general. 


Walking around the exhibit, there were showcases housing stunning collections of meteorites from across the cosmos - the Moon, Mars, asteroids - offering visitors a glimpse into the wonders of our universe.


There was a sheet attached on a bulletin board above each meteorite that told the story of how UCLA acquired it and high-level information about the type of mineral identified from it, and related details.


Overall a good suggestion from Google, since otherwise we wouldn't have found out about this place, and I gathered from friends who went here that not much else was worth seeing within that campus. It was truly a much better one-time experience that we had in LA over visiting regular beaches and restaurants.





1 comment:

  1. The surprise additions to trips are the best. This sounds absolutely wonderful.

    ReplyDelete