Mount Palomar

As promised, a bit about my visit to Palomar.
This time, I did more than the guided tour - actually went there for a scientific observation. The Mt. Palomar observatory is the "back yard" telescope of Caltech. It's a couple hours drive, the road going by a few Indian reservoirs, which are the only legal places in California where you can onen a Casino. When we stopped for gas, some weird guy started talking to me, and said that he just came back from the casino... when i asked him if he won anything, he said "to tell ya the truth, um broke. today, i didn't bet a dime. you pay $13 on the bus, and then they give you $25 when you get to the casino. so today i made 8 bucks"
anyway, that's beside the story...


The 200" dome at Palomar

This is the "inside" of the dome.. i didn't take this picture myself, actually it's a picture of a picture that's hanging in the kitchen in the "monestary" - where the observers sleep and enjoy the quiet (see below). i believe this picture was taken using a long exposure, while the dome rotated and the lights inside were on. isn't it cool?

it's actually really hard to take a picture of such a large telescope. there's just not enough space inside the dome to back up and catch the entire monster in your field of view...
this is my attempt at a panoramic image, inside the dome. the curvy beams are actually straight, and this fish-eye effect of the panoramic photography makes them look curved...


This is a HUGE telescope. a few details, the telescope weighs 140 tons, the 200" mirror weighs 14 tons. the dome is 42 meters wide, and weighs about a thousand (1000!!) tons. the reason this dome is so large, is that this telescope is probably the largest one that's "alt-azimuth" - one axis of it points exactly to the north - this is the horse-shoe part - making it easier for it to follow the sky and correct the effect of earth moving around. this way, it needs to move only in one direction during the exposure. other large telescopes, don't point to the north, and need a computer to calculate the small adjustments they need to take all the time in order to follow the sky. with today's computer, this is not a problem, of course. i think it's just awesome though.



this is the view from the "cat walk", the other dome you see over there is (i think) the "small" 60" telescope, also a part of the observatory.



and this is the monestary, where observers sleep, eat and enjoy the peace and quiet. dinner is served every night at 6pm sharp. traditionally - all the pbservers from all the domes are supposet to report exactly on time. practically, all the domes are now operated remotely... so dinner is mostly for the observers at the 200".