Reminder: The Journey to Palomar on PBS

Consider yourself reminded that The Journey to Palomar airs on many PBS stations tonight (June 22nd). Be sure to check your local listings and check out the trailer below:

The trailer was made for the first airing of the documentary, which is why it says "November 10th" at the end. Feel free to ignore that.

The Journey to Palomar Returns to PBS this Week

I am happy to report that The Journey to Palomar, a documentary about George Ellery Hale and the building of the 200-inch telescope, will again be shown on PBS. It is a moving and inspirational story that is not to be missed.

Follow this link to check your local listings.

A short clip is posted below.

Watch the full episode. See more The Journey to Palomar.

North County News Visits Palomar Observatory

On Saturdays & Sundays guided tours of the Hale Telescope take place 3 times daily. North County News was up recently to see the action. Here is their video:

The public tours do not go into the control room, but they do get rave reviews. If you are going to be in the area, why come on over for a visit?

Shield Your Outdoor Lights

Here is a short video on the importance of shielding outdoor lighting:

The great thing about shielding outdoor lighting as shown in the video is that more light is directed where it is actually needed. Instead of causing glare or shining upward into the sky the light source does not need to be as bright. This means that a lower wattage lighting fixture can be used which will save money.

In spite of the logic behind using fully-shielded lighting, lights like the ones shown below continue to be installed across the country.

Palomar Observatory - A Timescape

Last weekend astronomer Roger Griffith was using the 200-inch Hale Telescope to hunt for cold brown dwarfs. His observations were made to follow-up on data collected with the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer mission. In addition to his time on the telescope, Roger managed to dash out to continue work on a video of time-lapse photography that he had begun shooting at Palomar during one of his observing runs last year.

Here is the result:

Palomar Observatory - A Timescape from Roger Griffith on Vimeo.

Corning Talk Now Online

For any who might be interested, the talk I gave last month at the Corning Museum of Glass is now posted to their website as an MP4 video file (779 Mb) and as an audio-only MP3 file (68 Mb). FYI, it runs about 50 minutes. I hope you enjoy it.

Shoveling Snow off of the Dome - Part 2

Some of you may remember my Shoveling Snow from the Dome post from April of last year. If not, feel free to follow the link to see some telephoto pictures of some of the Palomar crew shoveling snow off of the slit of the dome of the Hale Telescope.

F0r the last several months I have been cast in to a role that is more involved with the nightly operation of the telescope (that's why the number of blog posts have dropped dramatically) and today I had my first opportunity to shovel snow off of the top of the dome. I was able to bring a camera with me and can share some pics of from the experience.

The basic problem is this. If you open the dome with snow on the top, snow will fall in on the telescope and instrumentation. So a small crew, each secured with a safety harness, is sent up to remove the snow from the dome slit.

Here is a view of the top of the dome before any work was begun:


Here is a view of the work as it was nearing completion:

Notice that there is still quite a bit of snow on the dome, but the area that poses the greatest potential risk to the telescope has been pretty much cleared.

Here I am on top of the world:


Joining me on this quest was Greg:


Trust me, 135-feet would be a long way to fall, so having the safety harness secured is very important.


It is important to tune out the view, because it is so amazing, but I did manage to snap a few quick shots:

The photo above is looking roughly southward. You can see the little dome of the 18-inch Schmidt (center) and the much bigger (but much farther away) dome for the 60-inch telescope (right). You can also see the snow-filled Mendenhall Valley and the Crestline/Birch Hill ridge of Palomar Mountain (behind the 60-inch telescope at right).

This view is looking toward High Point. If you click to embiggen the photo you can easily see the High Point lookout tower. In the center is the dome of the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope. To the left is the observatory's 1,000,000-gallon water tank and the water tower.

Finally, check out this short video that I took of the view:

At Palomar Observatory every day is an adventure.

Fly to the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies

I showed this video in a talk I gave recently and, by request I am posting it here too. It is a flight through our galaxy past familiar objects like the Horsehead Nebula, the Crab and then out of the Milky Way Galaxy past Andromeda, M33, M81& M82 and out to the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.

Enjoy!

Here is a direct link to the video on YouTube.

Last Night from our New All-Sky Camera

Here is how last night looked from our new all-sky camera:

If you look closely (you may need to watch it more than once) you can spot the dome of the Hale Telescope in the upper right - near the edge of trees. Here is a direct link to it on YouTube.

Asteroid Discovery Video

Check out this cool video by Scott Manley of asteroids as they are discovered from 1980 to the present time. Many thousands of the ones shown here were discovered at Palomar Observatory (and lots of other places too).

Check out the full resolution version here at YouTube. You can get the full text there, but note that most of asteroids are discovered in the opposite direction of the sun. That is until the very end when a new set of discoveries shows up, those asteroids discovered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Two Nights at the Palomar Observatory Video

Here is a follow-up to yesterday's astrophoto. A YouTube video of Iair Arcavi's night shots taken during his observing run at Palomar a week and a half ago.

It is simply stunning. Here is a direct link to the video on YouTube.

Meet Me at the Corner visits Palomar Observatory

Last year Meet Me at the Corner, a website that offers virtual field trips for kids visited me at Palomar Observatory. The video is available on their website and is embedded below.



Since they shot the interview with me the price of a Galileoscope has gone up.They are now $30 each (unless you buy a bunch of them) plus shipping, which is still a bargain.

The Known Universe

The American Museum of Natural History astronomer Ben R. Oppenheimer (a member of the team that found the companion to the star Alcor) is part of the group that produced The Known Universe - a short film produced from real astronomical data that takes the viewer on an amazing trip.

From Dr. Oppenheimer's web site:

Every mountain, planet, satellite, star, galaxy, quasar and our cosmic horizon are represented accurately in both size and position relative to each other, based on our best scientific knowledge to date. No interpolations have been made, and only objects that have actually been observed are included. As a result, you will see vast regions of the universe where we have not yet been able to map the locations of particular types of objects, for various scientific reasons. These gaps are akin to the regions labeled 'terra incognita' in old globes and maps, before people had fully documented the geography of the world. This visualization starts from the mountains of Tibet and takes you swirling though our database out to the furthest reaches of the universe that are observable. As we travel away from Earth, the distance from home is represented in the length of time that light takes to travel the same distance.

The film is based on the Digital Universe Atlas, an on-going project of the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, which consists of the world's most complete and scientifically accurate four-dimensional map of the universe. This visualization, while demonstrating some of the wealth of the Digital Universe Atlas, features only a fraction of the database.

New Vistas in Adaptive Optics

The folks over at SPIE have produced a new video: New Vistas in Adaptive Optics. Click on over to have a look. When you do you'll see adaptive optics expert Bob Tyson (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Antonin Bouchez and Christoph Baranec from Caltech and a whole bunch of images from and footage of the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar.

Cool stuff!

Palomar in Science Fiction - Super Friends Edition

When Superman needs a big mirror to save the day, where would he go? Click on the movie below to find out in this clip from the Super Friends.

OK, this one is a bit of a stretch as the Super Friends are very much fantasy an not so much science fiction, but I just had to post this. They pretty much got everything wrong about Palomar except for the fact that we have a mirror 200-inches across. But, hey, it's just a cartoon, right?

You might recognize the voice of the narrator. That's Ted Knight, which to me was better known as news anchor Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Palomar Observatory was featured in a filmed version of Superman too. More on that later.

Still Inovating After All These Years

SPIE was at Palomar a couple of weeks ago to conduct some interviews. The first one, Palomar's 200-inch telescope: still innovating after 60 years of science, is now posted on their website. It is an interview with our Superintendent, Dan McKenna. In the interview Dan talks about the Observatory's mission and some new observing projects we have going on. I am biased, but it is cool stuff.

Palomar in Ads - III

I have posted a few print ads here, now it is time for some video.

It is a wonderful new world of Fords! From 1960 I give you the Falcon, the Thunderbird and the Galaxy. All sold to you using a model of the Hale Telescope and Dome.

Ride the Dome

Here's some video that was posted to YouTube by someone who attended one of our recent evening tours run through the Ruben H. Fleet Space Center. You can see part of the tour from the observing floor under the Hale Telescope and experience the thrill of riding the big dome during a rotation.



We have only one more of these tours for the season and I think that it is already sold out.

Flying Insects & Light Pollution

Below is an amazing video of time-lapse photography showing flying insects near streetlights. I have never seen anything like it.

flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

The video shows (in an unique way) what you already know. Flying insects are attracted to lights. You might not know that many of them are killed each night by the lights they are attracted to. To most people that sounds like a good thing, right?

Check out these statistics from the Starry Night Lights Blog:

Studies show that the average street lamp kills at least 150 insects each night it is lit. Multiply that by 365 and you get 54,750 insects killed by one lamp in a year. A city block has at least 4 usually more in the range of 8 street lamps. That means that one city block is knocking out 219,000 to 438,000 insects per year.


While flying insects are an annoyance to humans, they are food to birds, bats, reptiles & more. Read the full post, quoted above to see the full impact that streetlights can have on the animal kingdom.

Palomar Transient Factory Video

Here's a video with me talking about Palomar Transient Factory:



Here's a direct like to it on YouTube. That's Hans-Werner Braun, from HPWREN, giving an introduction to the piece.