Flying Horse Telescope Oil

Back in the day, the 200-inch telescope floated on Mobile Flying Horse Telescope Oil. Here's what a drum of the stuff looked like:

Mobile Oil was pretty proud of the fact that they made the oil for the biggest telescope in the world. They even took out full page ads in magazines to show off their fine product.

Alas, Flying Horse Telescope Oil is no more. At Palomar we have moved on to a modern, synthetic (and fire resistant) oil.

Just like the oil in a car, it doesn't last forever and needs to be changed out from time to time. How often do we change our oil? Every 5,000 galaxies? Nah, we changed it yesterday and from what I hear it was last done about 4 years ago. That's waaay more than 5,000 galaxies.


The 200-inch telescope has three oil pumps that push oil to the north and south telescope bearings. We have three pumps. One for the south (foreground), one for the north (in the back), and one that can be switched to handle the north or the south (middle).


From the perspective above that's the north pump on the left and the south on the right. Behind the pumps, almost lost in the pipes and valves, are the two oil reservoirs that hold the oil for the two bearings. Here is the opened reservoir for the north bearing, where the oil was changed yesterday.


The task was simple. First pump the oil out of the reservoir into a drum for recycle.


Here is the sludgy insides of the empty reservoir:

After the oil is pumped out it is time to wipe down the inside and refill with nice, fresh oil.

It is a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. The process was most certainly not done in 30 minutes (or less), but all-in-all it was a good oil change and by mid afternoon everything was ready for another night of operating the 530-ton telescope.

So what oil do we use now? Quintolubric 822. Many of the kids that come to visit the observatory tell me that the observatory smells like crayons. Kids, that's not crayons. That's the smell of telescope oil.

Explore the Stars

Friday (tonight!) and Saturday night this weekend you can Explore the Stars from Palomar Mountain. Explore the Stars is a free program for observing the wonders of the night sky from the National Forest Service's Observatory Campground (Its not at the observatory, just named for us).
It is a great program, usually held monthly from April through October. Click here for the full list of dates for the year.

Closures

Due to a special event taking place at the observatory we will be unable to give guided tours on Saturday, April 25. Our normal schedule of weekend guided tours resumes for Sunday, April 26.

Also, we've got some maintenance taking place in our visitor center which will keep it closed to visitors on April 27, 28, & 29. The observatory will still be open and visitors can still see the Hale Telescope, but not the exhibits in the visitor center. Sorry about that.

Prototype Preview

Last fall I had the opportunity to visit the 20-inch prototype of the 200-inch telescope. It used to reside at Caltech, but now is at the Eileen Collins Observatory at Corning Community College in New York.

I have had a couple of requests for info about this and am planning a big post on it soon, but in the meantime here is a very short teaser about it:

Dark Sky Week

Just a quick reminder: it is National Dark-Sky Week and International Dark Sky Week too. What will you do to celebrate?

The Cyclops of Palomar

Who was Robert T. Edgar? And What was his connection to Palomar?

Here's a showbill advertising one of his talks that I bought off of eBay a while ago.

It certainly looks as if he made a living touring the country talking about the 200-inch telescope in his "The Cyclops of Palomar" lecture demonstration in the 1940s and 1950s (see the "Conquest of Space" article in the link). You can find another showbill of his where he was appearing "IN PERSON" courtesy of the University of Iowa Libraries' Special Collections Department. Page 2 tells a little bit of his story and offers some glowing reviews of his presentations.

I would certainly love to hear more about Robert T. Edgar, how he got started on this road and what happened to his cool props. Does anyone out there know his story? Page 2 of the showbill linked above says that he "brings first-hand information of the great telescope through the inventions and contributions which his father has made in connection with the mounting of the great instrument." This just adds to the mystery as far as I am concerned.

Who are you callin' dummy?

By 1940 construction of the Hale Telescope had been completed and it was time to balance it. At that time the 14.5-ton mirror for the telescope was still in the optical shop back at Caltech. Further, initial balancing of a large telescope was at that time not generally done with the expensive and fragile mirror in place. A "dummy mirror" was crafted to take the place of where the real mirror was later to be installed.

Perhaps you've seen the large concrete disc behind the dome of the Hale Telescope?

Yes, this disc is the same approximate weight as the 200-inch mirror and the support cell that it rides on. It was in the Hale Telescope, occupying the same place where the mirror is now, from May, 1940 until October, 1947.

All work on the 200-inch mirror was stopped during World War II, which greatly delayed the arrival of the completed mirror.

Here is a newspaper clipping that shows the dummy mirror installed:


The article dates back to when all work on the Hale Telescope was stopped due to the war and Harley C. Marshall was acting as caretaker.

Harley's role at the observatory dates back to its earliest days. From The Perfect Machine by Ronald Florence:

"By the end of the first year of work on the mountain, cottages had been built for [Superintendent Byron] Hill and a few others with families. Mary Marshall became the schoolteacher. Her husband, Harley Marshall, kept account books and arranged public relations for the tourists who were already finding their way up the mountain to see the world's largest telescope."

As Palomar Observatory's person who is currently in charge of public outreach, Harley Marshall and I have a connection separated by some 70 years.

Florence also describes Marshall's role during WWII:

"On Palomar, with the work crew gone, the buildings were closed. Harley Marshall stayed behind as caretaker, and once a month a small crew came up to the mountain to "exercise" the machinery, checking equipment for corrosion, starting up the oil pumps on the two-hundred-inch telescope, turning the dome, and slewing the drives from one limit to the other to avoid the ravages of inactivity. When they left Marshall was again alone with the machines.

"Marshall had been in charge of public relations and visitors before the war. Navy pilots in training at Southern California bases sometimes used Palomar as a navigation point, so Marshall would see planes overhead, but there were no more visitors to the observatory and no press releases. The world had forgotten the perfect machine."

From time to time I find myself alone in the dome with the telescope and have the time to stop and consider all that have come before me--those that have worked on the telescope and its mirror, used it to unravel the secrets of the universe, and even those like Harley Marshall who have had a role in telling its story.

It must have been difficult for Marshall being relatively alone and knowing that the great telescope lay unfinished, not yet able to begin its mission.

Of course the 200-inch telescope was completed. For the last 60 years astronomers have been using it. The story of the telescope is still continuing. Last night it was used for nine and a half hours to probe distant galaxies. Tonight that program will continue and tomorrow night a new set of observers will be here to tackle yet another mystery of the cosmos. If Harley Marshall were here I am sure that he would be happy to know that.

Video Saturday

It is Saturday. I am working today, but you aren't you might have time to enjoy some videos.

Have you ordered your Galileoscope yet? If not, why? They are only $15.00 and can give you views of the Moon like this:



Not bad, eh?

If you missed The Journey to Palomar on PBS and haven't seen it on DVD you might consider buying it on iTunes.It is available for an amazingly low price of $1.99. The preview available there is a bit odd, so if you don't know what it is all about you should just check out this trailer instead.




Finally, I was asked to give a local introduction to the 400 Years of the Telescope when it aired on KPBS-TV in the San Diego area. Here's the result:

Palomar Science Meeting in 2 Weeks

The 2009 Palomar Science meeting begins in just 2 weeks. Check out the list of presenters & topics. I will naturally be reporting on all that takes place. Stay tuned.

Kepler Catches TRES-2

You remember TRES-2, don't you? Just take a good look at the star known as GSC 03549-02811 and you can't miss it. That's because TRES-2 is an exoplanet and every 2.47 it passes directly between its parent star (GSC 03549-02811) and us. As it does it produces a sort of mini eclipse known as a transit.

Above is some artwork showing a transiting exoplanet. Why artwork? Astronomers can not actually see the exoplanet, just the dimming of the star caused by the planet as it passes in front of its parent star. Click here to see a graphic of what I am talking about.

TRES-2 gets its unique name from being the 2nd planet discovered as a part of TrES, the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey. The planet was found by this network of three small-aperture telescopes, one of which was based at Palomar. The network was made up of: Sleuth (Palomar Observatory, Southern California), the PSST (Lowell Observatory, Northern Arizona) and STARE (Observatorio del Teide, Canary Islands, Spain).

Transits are all the rage for finding exoplanets and NASA's Kepler mission is banking on the success of this technique. One of the things that makes TRES-2 so exciting is that it is located in the same part of the sky that Kepler will be staring at. They hope to find many, many exoplanets, including Earth-sized worlds (which TRES-2 certainly isn't). Since the Kepler team already knows that TRES-2 is there they can use it as sort of a calibrator for finding unknown exoplanets.

The team released their first images today and you can see TRES-2's parent star (GSC 03549-02811) in all its glory.

By the way the little 4-inch Sleuth telescope is no longer in operation on Palomar, but it had a good run in helping to discover several exoplanets.