Five Years and Counting

As of today I have been at Caltech's Palomar Observatory for five years. It continues to be a pleasure and an honor to work at this fine institution with its remarkable, dedicated staff. The observatory has a distinguished history and a promising future of exploration and I am happy to be able to help bring the Palomar story to many people.

Helping me to bring Palomar to the people are a great group of volunteers, the Palomar Observatory Docents (or PODs as I call them). Many of our active docents are shown in this recent group photo.


The PODs are a dedicated and wonderful group of people who have become part of the Palomar family by helping in our public outreach program in a variety of ways, including giving tours of the Hale Telescope.

We are always looking for more people who might be interested in helping out, especially as we are about to enter into our new tour season with docent-led tours of the 200-inch Hale Telescope given twice daily on Saturdays (11:30 am & 1:30 pm) from April through October.

Potential docents don't need to be an astronomer or a Palomar expert to apply. A willingness to learn and an interest in speaking to people is all that is needed. More information can be found here.