Wednesday, July 8, 2009

In Case of Emergency . . .

What's that hanging on the wall of the 200-inch Hale Telescope's Data Room between the video monitor and the white board?




It is a Galileoscope!

8 comments:

MrsLittleJeans said...

Well, I ordered one...this better be good you guys : )

Anonymous said...

I ordered one too and am getting slightly impatient...we've just had some amazingly clear skies and I wanna good view of Neptune. Galileo, Galileo, I want my Galileoscope, I ordered it at the beginning of May, of May, of MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY (to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody):)

Palomar Observatory said...

LOL!

Bohemian Rhapsody should be the official song of the International Year of Astronomy.

Anonymous said...

In light of the very recent news that Galileo may have known he discovered a new planet when he recorded Neptune near Jupiter in 1613, here is a paper by Charles Kowal who worked at Mount Palomar at the time and how its library helped in this discovery back in 1979:

http://www.dioi.org/Kowal-Galileo.pdf

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v287/n5780/abs/287311a0.html


S. Drake and C. T. Kowal "Galileo's Sighting of Neptune" Scientific American 243(6), 52-59 (1980)

Palomar Observatory said...

Yes, I know about Charles Kowal's discovery about Galileo & Neptune.

I think the new story is that Galileo may have actually recognized Neptune as something interesting, still I am not seeing Kowal get recognition in the story going around now.

Anonymous said...

I am trying to rectify that situation in regards to Kowal, which just posting it on your site is doing as well. :^)

I wonder, did Galileo truly understand what he was seeing and decided to keep quiet about it? Or like Saturn's rings, he knew something was up but wasn't sure what.

Judging by his massive ego, I can't imagine that Galileo would have kept quiet even under threat from the Church if it meant he would be the one known as the discoverer of a whole new planet.

Palomar Observatory said...

Galileo certainly didn't keep his other discoveries a secret. Had he suspected that what we now know to be Neptune was a new thing he would have told the world.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Galileo thought stars moved too and that his telescope was able to pick up the slight changes that unaided vision could not.

So he interpreted as the object near Jupiter as a moving star.

I wish I could find the quote where he thought the stars were only two to three times farther from us than Saturn.