Another Google Earth location and some interesting reading for a rainy night - the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Pluto was demoted once, but poor old Greenwich Observatory has been done-in twice!
Firstly, the RGO headquarters was moved from Greenwich (London) to Herstmonceaux (Sussex) in the 1950's, moved again to Cambridge (UK), and closed in 1998. Well, at least Pluto didn't actually
disappear.
The second demotion came with the adoption of WGS84 and GPS positioning ... now the prime meridian runs 102.5 metres to the east of the 'zero degrees' originally defined by the Airy Transit Circle.
Is nothing sacred?
A personal view of the RGO disaster:
http://personales.ya.com/ejmills/ast...s/rgo/rgo.html
Standard RGO blurb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_O...tory_Greenwich