Golden Gate marks 75th year

May 28, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

LOS ANGELES

The Golden Gate Bridge is getting a little sparkle for its 75th birthday.

On Sunday, remotely operated mirrors on top of the bridge’s towers began flashing narrow beams of reflected sunlight all around the San Francisco Bay in an installation that marries art and science.

“We love our view of the bridge. We’ve always wanted to enhance it with a little sparkle,” said astrophysicist John Vallerga, whose offices at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory in the Berkeley Hills overlook the bay.

Members of the public eventually will be able to arrange their own brief performance by going to the installation’s website and scheduling a time and place for the beam to shine.

Part of the bridge’s yearlong birthday celebration, the project, called Solar Beacon, will remain in place until Aug. 30.

Bridge workers installed one of two sets of mirrors, or heliostats, atop each of the bridge’s two 746-foot towers Friday. The heliostats, about two feet across, are swiveled and tilted by motors directed by cellphone commands.

“It’s art in progress. It’s never been done before, and we don’t know what it’s going to look like,” said Vallerga, who is executing the project with a group of volunteers.

Normally he builds instruments for astronomical spacecraft, including ones bound for Pluto and Jupiter. That work, he added, is “very utilitarian. It’s not often we can appreciate its artistic value. This is a little bit different.”