The “big eye”
The Russel Ray, Property Consultant home inspection this past Thursday was out on Palomar Mountain. It caught me off guard when I scheduled it because I had no clue that there were homes up on Palomar Mountain. There are, though, including this beauty:
Palomar Mountain is a historic place, so there were also a few “historic” homes, such as this one:
I saw those two buildings after the home inspection, which was on a rather non-descript home. Once I finished the inspection, I headed over to the “Big Eye,” more properly known as Mount Palomar Observatory:
The Big Eye is only 62 miles from where I live yet I had never been there. It’s not a tourist attraction because it is a working observatory.
I have been infatuated with the place since I was a young stamp collector and landed this stamp in my collection:
At one point in my early life I even wanted to be a meteorologist, an astronomer, a star gazer. Then I discovered that in order to be a good one, I would probably have to go to four years of college, two years of graduate school, and two more years getting a doctorate. I was pretty sure that when I finished four years of college, I would be finished with school. I was right.
Some interesting things about the big eye, the Palomar Mountain Observatory:
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The Palomar Mountain Observatory has several telescopes, the largest of which is the 200-inch Hale Telescope. Other telescopes include a 60-inch telescope, not named but located in the Oscar G. Meyer Building (Oh, I’d love to be an Oscar Meyer weiner…………….), the 48-inch Samuel Oschin telescope, and a 24-inch telescope completed in 2005.
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Inches refers to the size (doesn’t it always?) of the mirror lens that collects light.
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Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York, manufactured the lens. It was their second attempt. The first lens was flawed because the glass was so hot that it melted the supporting structure, allowing bricks and steel bolts to float to the surface. The flawed disc is on display at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York.
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The dome is 137 feet in diameter, making it the third largest dome in the United States, behind the Superdome and the new San Diego Central Library dome (see America’s second largest dome is nearing completion).
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The 200-inch telescope is named after George Hale (1868-1938), the driving force behind its construction, and the builder of other major telescopes throughout the United States: a 40-inch telescope at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, still the world’s largest refracting telescope (1897); a 60-inch telescope (1908) and the 100-inch Hooker Telescope (1917) at Mt. Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, California.
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Construction began in 1936 and was completed in 1939. The lens, however, did not arrive until November 1947, having taken almost a decade to build and install.
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First sky images from the Hale Telescope were taken on January 26, 1949.
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The dome rotates to keep the sky in line with the dome opening (seen on the stamp) and can rotate 360° in four minutes.
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It was the largest telescope in the world from its completion in 1949 through 1976, the second largest through 1993, and currently the third largest.
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The observatory has over 2,000 acres of land owned by the California Institute of Technology, which owns and operates the telescopes. The original observatory was on 160 acres of land bought by George Hale with a $6 million grant from the Rockerfeller Foundation.
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Pluto’s demotion from planet status resulted from work done by CalTech astronomers at Palomar Mountain Observatory using the Hale Telescope.
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The telescope originally was capable of seeing 2 billion light years away. Computer and digital imaging programs, such as ”adaptive optics,” installed during the past decade allow the Hale Telescope to see 13 billion light years away.
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Posted on September 8, 2012, in Halls of History, History, History Through Philately, Manmade, Out & About, Photos and tagged pictures of mount palomar observatory. Bookmark the permalink. 18 Comments.
Very interesting post and the stamp is cool
Very detailed post.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing
I so enjoy learning something new… thank you… great pictures love the leaning house next to the tree..
I, too, wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid. Great post about Mount Palomar, Russel. I know you said it’s not a tourist attraction, but I wonder if they ever have tours to be able to see the telescopes…
They have a self-guided tour which isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on because most of the telescope is not accessible to the public, for obvious reasons. I read that they have docent-led tours but I didn’t see any docents or any tours. Of course, since it’s not a tourist trap, one might have to schedule those docent-led tours, such as for school groups. The 200-inch Hale Telescope is the only one even remotely accessible to the public.
Thanks, Russel. Still, it would be amazing to see that Hale Telescope!
And it was! There is one spot traveling up the South Grade where the Hale is visible from about six miles away. It’s awesome, but I couldn’t find the same spot traveling down. The grounds are magnificent, not landscaped, just fields of ferns (never seen ferns growing in sunny fields before; you can see a field of ferns in the picture of the telescope above) and huge trees, including sequoias. I had no idea that we had sequoias growing naturally down here in San Diego County.
It sounds beautiful and pristine.
I’ll have a few more pictures in an upcoming post.
LOL, love the “historic” home photo!
We used to go up to Palomar when I lived in San Diego. I actually attended one of my astronomy classes there. Very cool place!
The “historic home” is my dream house! We toured an observatory when we visited Vancouver Island, although I do not now remember the name – I’d have to look through the scrapbook of that trip. It was fascinating, as was your trip.
So cool, as you may know, I have a thing about outer space and those who go where no man has gone before. 13 billion light years away…..what the heck was going on back then?
Love the stamp and seeing the observatory!! Reminds me of a movie I saw once.
Looks lovely and appears to have variation in styles, which is very nice in this tract housing era.
Mind blowing. Me, I’d be happy with that little historic shack! It’s like something out of Lord of the Rings
HAHAHA Sideways house is cool lol