Why the Mt. Wilson Observatory was worth saving
Joshua Bearman of the LA Weekly re-posted a story about his trip to the famous Mt. Wilson Observatory in Los Angles, which came close to being destroyed by the fire. Many thanks to the firefighters who worked so hard and risked their lives to save it!
With the fire threat to Mt. Wilson seemingly abated, I have taken enough of a deep breath to go back and look at one of my favorite early LA Weekly stories, about an awesome trip I took up to the Mt. Wilson observatory and inside the massive, revolving dome of the 100-inch Hooker telescope, the largest in the world for the first half of the twentieth century. (And still a functioning, important facility.) Did you know that the Hooker's 9,000-pound optic was blown at a bottleworks in France, remains the largest such piece of glass, and was carried up the mountain by donkey in 1915? True! And it was there, as you surely know, that Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, and by extension, the Big Bang. But did you also know that a few years earlier, it was also Hubble who first discovered that there are galaxies at all? True! Before 1922, it was believed the Milky Way was the whole kit and kaboodle. Hubble sat up there above Altadena night after night and said "Eureka!" Even Einstein had to rethink things and came up for a visit.Addendum: Here's The LA Times' Tim Rutten on Mt. Wilson Observatory's place in history. (Thanks, Xeni!)
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Why so many typos/grammatical errors in the quoted text?
God bless you, Mr. Hubble.
#1 - not to mention factual errors. The 100" mirror was driven up the road on a Mack truck in 1917, not by donkey in 1915.
@#3
But it was a donkey powered Mack truck. They didn't have the bulldogs in the engine until 1922. ;)
I any case, it was also a time when you could actually use the largest telescope in the world to put an eye-piece into it and see the light of the stars yourself!
Also, five miles away as the crow flies is the smaller 30" telescope at Stony Ridge Observatory, which was also spared from the fire.
http://stony-ridge.org/
The Mack trucks with the 100" mirror broke down and had to be assisted by burros, which had been the typical mode of transport up the trail (and then the road) for years.
I thought the reason they fought to protect Mt Wilson was because of all the antennas on it. I never heard anyone mention protecting the observatory.
@#8: Say what? Protecting the observatory atop Mt. Wilson has been mentioned since day one of the fires. It's all over the nets due to Mr. Hubble's discoveries there.
And all this time I thought it was the other Hubble telescope that was hauled up to its current altitude by donkeys.
ISTR that they had to let the mirror blank* to slowly cool for about a year after casting to prevent streses (and possibly cracks) from building up.
*The glass before it was ground and polished
Mark (or the mods): Corrections needed in "a story about his trip the the famous Mt. Wilson Observatory in Los Angles"
=> "trip to the famous
=> "Los Angeles"