Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Don't Panic!

If you are anywhere near Palomar Mountain today you probably noticed the smoke plume. For me the view is giving strong memories of 2007's Poomacha Fire.

The good news is that this is not a wild fire. The National Forest Service is performing a 20-acre "prescribed burn" in the Fry Creek area.

Unfortunately, it is still rather close to the observatory and the smoke is likely to have a major impact on observing tonight.

Here's the view from the 60-inch telescope around noon today:


Even from well off of Palomar the smoke plume is rather impressive as you can see in this photo from around 4 p.m.

Alas, these are low quality shots captured from my phone. :(

2 comments:

Palomar Observatory said...

Alas, he smoke prevented us from being able to get on sky until after 1:00 a.m. There will be more burning today.

Anonymous said...

What is the point of burning the fry creek trail? 50% of the mountain burned out in 2007, lets finish the job and burn 10% of the best trails remaining, and the best campground on the entire mountain ?

There are now no deer in Fry Creek valley for the first time in 20 years.

Now that the last part of the mountain has been ruined, neither myself nor my family will ever visit that total-usfs-management-disaster again.

so long palomar !!!