Astrophoto Friday - the Milky Way

It has been a busy week, but I did manage to take a moment to snap this photo of the summer Milky Way on Wednesday evening:


It was a beautiful evening, but you can certainly notice the light pollution coming from the many lights of San Diego County.

Due to an active marine layer San Diego has had a colder than normal summer this year. This has generally been good news for the observatory as the low coastal clouds often effectively block the light produced by the cities below, giving the observatory darker skies.

Palomar History Photo of the Week - August 9, 2010

The 200-inch telescope was fabricated at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company's plant in South Philadelphia. I believe that the largest single piece was the yoke for the south bearing of the telescope.

Here it is back at the Westinghouse plant:

As you can see it is pretty huge. As you can imagine the task of bringing it into the dome was not easy. Ronald Florence described it nicely in his book about Palomar, The Perfect Machine:

The Caltech engineers had calculated the size of the hatch in the dome the way a mover can calculate whether a sofa or piano will fit through a doorway. The opening was mathematically large enough for the largest components--the sections of the horseshoe and the lower section of the yoke mounting, which held the two tubes that connected to the horseshoe. A draftsman with a slide rule could demonstrate that with the right twists and turns the hatch would accommodate everything that had been shipped.

......

For one piece, the bottom section of the yoke, the engineers at Caltech had designed a special lifting harness to bring the assembly off the truck and up through the hatch. The harness didn't arrive in time for the unloading, so [superintendent Byron] Hill and his crew did it with lifting hooks and slings they put together on the spot. The unit had been trucked lying on its back and had to be tipped onto its side to fit through the hatch. Tipping a structure while it is hanging from rigging is a tricky operation, because the center of gravity of the item shifts as it turns. The fit was tight. The next day, when the yoke had been squeezed through the hatch and the exhausted crew had gone to bed, Hill said he finally understood what women went through at childbirth.

Here is the view of the yoke as it was brought in through the hatch and into the dome:


I think that it is no exaggeration at all to say that it was a tight fit.

Web Cam is Back on Line

The Hale Telescope web cam had been off line for a couple of weeks. It is up and running again.

The views are pretty good in the daytime, but don't expect to see anything at night as it is far too dark. My favorite views are those that come in twilight, like this shot recorded this morning with the 200-inch looking far to the north.

We are the World

Palomar Observatory has always had an international following and now you can read the main page from the observatory's website in Belorussian thanks to Patricia Clausnitzer, who did the translation!

Astrophoto Friday - Supernova 1972E

Astrophoto Friday returns with a pair of photos of the galaxy known as NGC 5253.

The photo on the left was taken with Palomar's 48-inch Schmidt telescope (now known as the Samuel Oschin Telescope) the night of June 4, 1959 by Milton Humason. The right-hand picture was taken by Charles Kowal with the same telescope the night of May 16, 1972.


Notice that the photo on the right has an extra star, visible to the lower right of the brightest part of the galaxy. The photo on the right has captured an explosion known as a supernova. This particular supernova (SN 1972e) was classified as a Type Ia supernova, which is thought to occur with the explosion of a dead star known as a white dwarf.

Supernova 1972e was found as a part of an organized survey for supernovae at Palomar that photographed thirteen of them in 1972. The old technique of photographing the sky and comparing the new images with older ones taken years before has now been supplanted by surveys that scan large volumes of sky and compare the new pictures with ones taken often days earlier. The Palomar Transient Factory survey has, at last count, bagged 622 supernovae since they began scanning the skies (also with Palomar's 48-inch telescope) last year.

That's quite an improvement, wouldn't you say?

Rattlesnakes!

We have had quite a large number of rattlesnake sightings at the observatory the last two weeks or so. I have personally encountered two of them in the last two days.

The picture below shows the one I sighted about 11:00 a.m. today, just outside the observatory's front gate:


Visitors to the observatory may have noticed the signs that warn people not to venture out into the fields of ferns. That's because you would not be able to spot a rattlesnake until it was too late.

Remember, should you see a rattlesnake, leave it alone and put some distance between you and the snake.

Should someone get bitten call 911 immediately. Cell phones rarely work on Palomar, so you may need to head for the gift shop or flag down someone who works here.

Be careful out there.

Another Fine Model Hale Telescope

A little over two years ago I got an email question with regard to a blog post I made with photos looking into the west arm of the Hale Telescope. I didn't realize at the time that the person asking the question, Rick Etheridge, was building a 1/63 scale model of the Hale.

Recently Rick sent me some photos of his model and he has allowed me to post them here for everyone to enjoy.

If you look closely you'll see that Rick has paid close attention to detail and added nice extras like the Hartmann screen (at right) and the dark, open mirror cover. Another fine example of his work is the view looking down into prime focus:

Notice that there is a chair for the observer and what looks to be a plate holder. The dark thing directly above (from this perspective) prime focus is the housing for the coudé mirror.

Finally, here is a look at the west arm of the telescope. Notice that he included the stairs inside the arm. Nice work, Rick!

This isn't the first model of the Hale to be featured here, you may recall the one I posted back in June that was also in Sky & Telescope magazine.

Palomar Poem

This poem, dedicated to the observatory, was recently sent my way:

A Poem For Mount Palomar Observatory

TO THE COSMOS

Night

Starry, Starry Night

Infinity of Light

Distant Futures

Nexus Here!

Photons, Photons, Photons!

My Brain

A Microstar

In Awe

Of Celestial Parents

~Ian Oliver Martin

Hoaxes, Tours, Galileoscopes & More!

There is a lot to catch up on, but for now I'll post a few quick links to some things.

First up, it is August, so that means it is time for the Mars Hoax to rear its ugly head once again. NASA has just put out a story on it. This is the kind of thing that gets people excited about astronomy (a good thing), but then dashes their hopes (a bad thing). This year Mars will not be visible in the sky at all and will be about as far from Earth as it can get--making the story about as untrue as it can possibly be.

Don't forget that Julian Starfest takes place later this week. It should be a fun event and there is a free public star party taking place there Saturday, August 7th.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a 7th grade science teacher from Boston as she makes the trek to 12 observatories of the southwestern U.S. She is blogging about it, so go on over to check it out.

The photo at the top of this post was from earlier today, as a group of students from UCSD's COSMOS program got a tour of the 200-inch Hale Telescope. Don't forget that you can go on your own tour of the Hale on Saturdays & Sundays through October. Click here for the details.

Speaking of tours, for the last year or so we have been giving out one Galileoscope on each tour. Over 300 were given out. Many of the galileoscopes were given out in the memory of one of our docents, Fred Givant. Last weekend we gave out our last one. I'd like to take this moment to remember Fred and to thank the people who helped continue the program in his memory.

Fred, we still miss your enthusiasm and your dedication to public outreach.

Palomar Skies has Returned

I just wanted to let everyone know that I was away on a vacation, but have returned. August should be a pretty busy month at the observatory and once I dig out most of my email you'll start seeing regular posts here again.