Palomar Mountain State Park to Close?

It looks like the State of California might be closing Palomar Mountain State Park. You can read here about the possible closures of the 220 of the state's 279 parks. Anybody who is interested in the issue might want to have a look at the California State Parks Foundation website.

Test Fit

The Cosmic Web Imager is a new instrument, built at Caltech, that is coming later this summer for use on the 200-inch Hale Telescope. It will detect and map faint ultraviolet emissions from the intergalactic medium and give astronomers lots of data for testing the standard model of structure formation in the universe.

The instrument isn't quite all together, but a few days ago part of the CWI team came to Palomar to make sure that the finished instrument will be able to be properly installed on the telescope.

Here are two photos from Wednesday's test fit.


All went well and the real instrument should install nicely when it arrives.

Galileoscopes: Going, Going, Gone?

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer is reporting that this weekend may be your last chance to order a Galileoscope. They are only $15 each, which is a real bargain. For those who are waiting for their order to arrive, their website says that they should do so in June.

If you don't know what a Galileoscope is you can read my post about them or go directly to their website.

Stories & Stars

It is time to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy with your kids!

The Western Center for Archaeology & Paleontology in Hemet, CA will present Stories & Stars with Ernest Siva and the Riverside Astronomical Society this Saturday night. So grab your little ones and head on out. It is free. Storytelling will be from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm storytelling and stargazing will be from 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm.

A New Exoplanet from an Old Technique

Back when I was a kid space exploration was flying high, astronauts were on the Moon, there were big plans for orbital cities and an astronomer had just announced the discovery of a system of planets orbiting a nearby star. It didn’t take much for my imagination to leap forward to my eventual trip into space. I was even sure that things would progress to the point where we would eventually be sending missions to explore the planets in orbit around Barnard’s Star. Alas, just about all of that has evaporated, even the planets.

Barnard’s Star is red dwarf star located just six light years from our solar system. Its small size and close proximity make it a great target to hunt for exoplanets. Back in the late 1960s astronomer Peter van de Kamp announced (see The Myserious Companions of Barnard's Star from Time Magazine's April 25, 1969 issue) the discovery of two planets in orbit about Barnard’s Star. B1, was slightly more massive than Jupiter and had an orbital period of 26 years and B2 was slightly less massive than Jupiter and had an orbital period of 12 years. All of this was pretty reasonable compared to our own solar system and life was good.

Peter Van de Kamp used a technique known as astrometry. The idea is to take very precise images of the star’s exact position relative to any background stars. As a planet orbits about the star its gravity will slightly pull the star toward the planet, making a change in its position. If all goes well a repeatable wobble, directly related to the orbital period of the planet will be detected.

van de Kamp knew that Barnard’s star was small, which was good because that makes it easier for a planet to deflect its position. He also knew that it was close, which was also good because it makes the tiny wobble easier to find. Unfortuately, what he didn’t know was that his technique was flawed. No other survey technique has been able to confirm his observations. Barnard’s Star apparently has no planets.

Planet hunters have not given up and new techniques have arisen. The number of known exoplanets now stands at almost 350. But what of van de Kamp’s method of astrometry? It was all but dead for many years, but two JPL astronomers resurrected it. For a little over a decade Steven Pravdo and Stuart Shaklan have been coming to Palomar to use their instrument called STEPS (STellar Planet Survey).


STEPS, seen above, is a large-format CCD camera that gets occasionally mounted at the Hale Telescope’s Cassegrain focus. The CCD has 4096 x 4096 pixels. The payoff of years of observing, an exoplanet discovery, is a difficult one to make. The elusive wobble that Peter van de Kamp thought he had found is small, just 1 milli-arcsecond in size -- that is the angle subtended by a human hair (about 50 microns wide) as seen from a distance of 30 miles!

I am happy to tell you that Pravdo and Shaklan have indeed found an exoplanet using this technique!


The tiny star known as VB 10 is located 20 light years away in the constellation Aquila and is now the smallest star known to have an exoplanet. The planet, VB 10b, is six times more massive than Jupiter, but just about the same size as Jupiter. Notice in the artwork above that the two are pretty close to being the same size.

VB 10b has a nine month orbital period and is just 30 million miles from its star, that puts it a little closer to its star than Mercury is to ours. See below for the comparison.

This is not Palomar's first exoplanet, but congratulations still go out to Steven Pravdo and Stuart Shaklan on their discovery and for mastering the astrometric method of planet hunting.

You can read more about their find from JPL (it even has a movie) here, or here from Bad Astronomy or even here from space.com.

A Work of Art

The Hale Telescope's 200-inch, 14.5-ton Pyrex mirror has been described by some as a work of art. It took the Corning Glass Works years to perfect the casting process and to come up with the correct mixture of ingredients for the glass. Once it was cast it took nearly 11 months properly to cool the molten glass. It was ground and polished at Caltech where it spent 11 and 1/2 years in the optical shop. It required still more work to integrate it into its support system after it got to Palomar and installed into the telescope.

The mirror is a blend of art, engineering and science. And now it has inspired art. Glass artist Mark Peiser has created this piece based on the 200-inch mirror:


Here is what he says about the mirror and his art:

The Palomar Mirror, the largest single glass casting achieved in its time, allowed humanity to look further into the universe than ever before, bringing us closer to an understanding of our existence than any previous astronomical achievement.

By allowing for the development of astrophysical theories of outer space, the mirror itself would give structure and form to the unknown void—it would transform the negative into positive space. At the time, many worried that this transformation would reveal too much, that seeing closer to the origin of time would devalue the human experience, taking mystery away from the cosmos.

And yet, the more we see the more we wonder. The further we explore, the less we feel we know. Yes, the mirror has allowed us to see the rainbow of colors in the stars, to explore island universes, to learn of black holes and dark matter, but this has not led to simplified understanding. Rather, we have seen enough to begin to pose new questions.

Positive space, the known, is a structure from which we can begin to imagine the unknown safely. The negative space, the void, is the place of our dreams, our imagination and adventures. And it is the union of both which adds beauty, awe and mystery to all things.

Sanctuary, (Section 1, Detail 2), an interpretation of the original mirror at 1/2 scale, seeks to capture the mirror in the moment of its agency---the moment the unknown becomes known. As the astronomers say the first time a telescope is used, “At first light.”

The design of the Palomar Disk was defined by physics. The negative space of its structure creates an environment revealing the physics of light. As a glassmaker, I strive to realize such spaces. And as an individual, I seek them as a sanctuary. This series is intended as an acknowledgment and tribute to all those who have overcome the boundaries of this seductive and unforgiving material.

I think that there may be more coming from this project. I am looking forward to seeing it.

RTMC Round Up

I had a super time at RTMC last weekend. Lots of cool people, scopes & good times. I have lots of pictures. Probably too many to post here.

Here's a shot of the observatory's mobile gift shop and some of the crew who helped to run things.

Olivier from Shelyak Instruments was showing off their Lhires Lite spectroscope which gives a fantastic look at the solar spectrum. I have never seen so many absorption lines! They also have some great stuff for amateur astronomers looking to make an entrance into spectroscopy.


Barry Crist makes all sorts of neat model telescopes, including a 1/200 scale model of the Hale. It was at RTMC a few years ago that I first asked him to start making it. He is working on some models for Mt. Wilson now and he and I were discussing some other model options for Palomar that I hope will come to pass.


Back in the olden days RTMC was all about telescope making. RTMC actually stood for Riverside Telescope Makers Conference. Not many people are making their own scopes these days, but there are still a few every year. My favorite was this Victorian "steam punk" telescope made of mahogany, copper and brass:

There are words written on the mirror cover in French, which translate to "Its full of stars." A nod back to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I was deeply honored to spend some time with Ashley McDermott, seen below.

Ashley is a past winner of the Clifford W. Holmes Award. He told me of the time he visited Palomar as a teenager. The 200-inch mirror had not yet been installed and the concrete disk was in its place. Apparently there were some tests going on at the telescope. The oil pumps were on. Someone was at prime focus. And there was a rope hanging down from the telescope. Ashley, like many teenagers would have, did the obvious. He pulled the rope. This moved the 530-ton telescope (!) and caused much shouting and carrying on by the staff.

At RTMC I gave a talk on the construction of the 200-inch telescope. I showed many of the people, many of whom are long gone, who worked on the telescope and its parts. Ashley attended and repeated this wonderful story for everyone. His rendition of that experience helped to connect past to present. Fantastic.

George Ellery Hale: the Podcast

My latest podcast for the 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts is now available via iTunes and here on the 365 Days of Astronomy site too.

You can read George Ellery Hale's 1922 book, The New Heavens, here from Project Gutenberg or here from Google Book Search.

I have also posted a copy of Hale's April 1928 article in Harper's Monthly: The Possibilities of Large Telescopes.

Google Sky Map

I meant to post this awhile ago, but didn't quite get around to it. Sorry.

Anybody out there have an Android phone that has also tried Google Sky Map? If so, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

If not, be sure to check out the video. I haven't tried this as I don't have an Android, but it supposedly can access data from some of the Palomar Sky Surveys. Pretty cool for a phone. When can I get this for my iPhone?

HPWREN: the Movie

If you are wondering what HPWREN is and why it is important to Palomar Observatory you should watch this short movie. Ok, even if you weren't wondering it is worth your time. Be warned, I am in the movie.

Embedding it didn't work so well, so here is a direct link to the movie.
As I have said before, HPWREN gives us astronomical bandwidth, allowing the astronomers who use the observatory to do things they never could before.