Giant Telescopes in 3D

Todd Mason, of The Journey to Palomar fame, is at it again. A while ago I told you that on his new website, he has wonderful visualizations of what the next generation of giant telescopes will look like. He has just added a page of cool 3D images of these giant scopes: the Thirty Meter Telescope, the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (those are links to the individual project websites). He has also posted a 3D movie too. In the 3D movie you'll the Hale Telescope and the giants that are to come.

So grab your red/blue glasses and take a peak into the future. In 3D.

200-inch in 3D (again)

I have been remiss by not posting any 3D shots since October. So grab your red-blue 3D glasses, click on the image of the Hale Telescope taken earlier today and enjoy.

Samuel Oschin Telescope in 3D

Here's a 3D view of Palomar's 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope.

Man the Pumps! In 3D

Man the Pumps! Then grab your 3D glasses because here is a 3D photo of the vacuum pumps that work with the aluminizing chamber for the Hale Telescope's 200-inch mirror. Make sure that your glasses have red on the left.

Stay tuned for some cool shots & maybe a movie looking into the tank from when we did our test fire yesterday.

60-inch Telescope in 3D

If you have got a pair of those red-blue 3D glasses lying around you might enjoy this anaglyph image of the Palomar 60-inch telescope.

Happy Astronomy Day

Today is Astronomy Day! Lots of places around the country are hold events. In San Diego, the Ruben H. Fleet Science Center will be having a wide-range of events including a live broadcast from Palomar hosted by me.

Here at Palomar we are celebrating by having an engineering run. During the engineering run members of the staff here will make repair and improvements to the telescope's mirror supports, wiring, and dome rails. There's a lot of work going on.

I have been going around taking pictures and yesterday I put together two 3-D shots of the Hale. So if you've got red-blue glasses, put them on and click on the images below.


I'll post more images from the engineering run soon, but don't expect to see them in 3-D.

Oh, for those of you keeping score at home it was on this day 60 years ago that it was announced that the name of the 200-inch telescope would be the Hale Telescope. More on that later.