Mount Wilson Observatory

“ The telephone startled us by its insistent ring. It was a call from the hangar for Hart. The news broadcast announcer was in the midst of a long dissertation regarding the discovery only this morning that there were certain apparent discrepancies in the movements of the tides and unwonted perturbations of the moon's orbit. There flashed on the screen a view of the great observatory at Mount Wilson, and Professor Laughlin of that institution stepped into the foreground of the scene to take up the discussion so mechanically repeated by the announcer. ”

“ Other elements in the design of the 100-inch Hooker telescope have the same general object in view—that of developing and applying in astronomical practice the effective research methods suggested by recent advances in physics. Fresh possibilities of progress are constantly arising, and these are utilized as rapidly as circumstances permit.
The policy of undertaking the interpretations of celestial phenomena by laboratory experiments, an important element in the initial organization of Mount Wilson, has certainly been justified by its results. ”

“ The large instruments of our time hardly reach much farther, for visual observations. When, however, photographic plates are used, it is easily possible to get impressions of fainter stars, even with rather modest instruments. The large 100-inch mirror of the Wilson Observatory renders possible the photographic observations of stars of the 20th apparent magnitude, and even fainter.
The observations of visual magnitudes are performed almost exclusively with the photometer of Zöllner in a more or less improved form. ”

“ For the efficient use of a great telescope its location must be in a region of great atmospheric calm, where the sky is clear and transparent, with little wind, and where the number of days and nights of a year during which such conditions do not exist is small. For some reason, the "seeing" conditions at Mount Hamilton during the day are not of the best; but at night excellent conditions are found on a large
Lick Observatory from the West. ”

“ There is no time for the watcher to spend in what the outsider would regard as 'discovery'; such as sweeping for comets or asteroids, hunting for variable stars, sketching planets, and so forth. Indeed, there is a story current in the Observatory that some fifty years ago, when the tide of asteroid discovery first set in, Airy found an assistant, since famous, working with a telescope on his 'off-duty' night. ”

“ It is quite possible that there are many people whose sole opportunity of looking through a telescope is the penny peep through the instrument of some itinerant showman, who may have seen more of these than an active astronomer in a lifetime; while as to 'discoveries,' these lie no more within the scope of our national observatory than do geographical discoveries within that of the captain and officers of an ocean liner.
If it is not to afford the astronomer beautiful spectacles, nor to enable him to make thrilling discoveries, what is the purpose of Greenwich Observatory? ”

“ The facts of popular astronomy and of general popular science have been more widely disseminated. America, too, more than any other great nation, has advanced in the interval. It was about two years after this pamphlet had appeared, that J. Quincy Adams used the following significant language in advocating the erection of an astronomical observatory at Washington: 'It is with no feeling of pride as an American that the remark may be made, that on the comparatively small territorial surface of Europe there are existing more than 130 of these lighthouses of the skies ”

“ History will be just to his memory, and will not fail to record his early interest and strenuous zeal for the advancement of astronomical science, and the influence his eloquence and untiring perseverance, in illustrating its importance with an unsurpassed array of appropriate learning, exerted on the public mind in the United States, not only in effecting the establishment of other Astronomical Observatories, but absolutely compelling party spirit, notwithstanding its open, bitter animosity, to lay the foundation of that Observatory which now bears the name of "National." ”

“ This is the highest telephone line in the world, and its installation is an arduous undertaking. A permanent line is impossible, on account of the shifting of the glaciers and snowfields on which the poles must be erected.
There is also a meteorological observatory on Mont Blanc, but it is not at the summit and is not quite so high as that on Monte Rosa. The solar observatory which once stood at the very top of Mont Blanc no longer exists. The United States Signal Service (now the Weather Bureau) formerly maintained observatories on Pike's Peak (14,134 feet) and Mount Washington (6,280 feet) . ”

“ Even in these days of celestial photography, work done in a purely temporary erection, and with only the most primitive appliances in addition to the telescope, still involves a very large amount of cramped and motionless watching. He sighed as he thought of the physical fatigues before him, stretched himself, and entered the observatory.
The reader is probably familiar with the structure of an ordinary astronomical observatory. The building is usually cylindrical in shape, with a very light hemispherical roof capable of being turned round from the interior. ”

“ Public favour brings in its train material resources. It is represented by individual enterprise, and finds expression in an ample liberality. The first regular observatory in the Southern Hemisphere was founded at Paramatta by Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane in 1821. The Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope was completed in 1829. Similar establishments were set to work by the East India Company at Madras, Bombay, and St. Helena, during the first third of the nineteenth century. The organisation of astronomy in the United States of America was due to a strong wave of popular enthusiasm. ”

“ These observatories proved to be very strong and serviceable. They remained in use for a number of years with occasional slight repairs, were transported many thousand miles and set up in a great number of places in Europe, Asia, North and South America. They were designed by Mr. J. A. Rogers, and constructed at the Washington Navy Yard. Upon arriving at a point where observations were to be made, after obtaining the necessary permits from the local authorities, a suitable location for the observatory was the first consideration. ”

“ In his report of 1821 he called the attention of the government to the need of a permanent astronomical observatory, in order to ascertain with accuracy the right ascension, declination, latitude and longitude of the moon, planets and stars, and to compute a nautical almanac. The movement of Lambert for a national observatory seems to have come to an end in 1824. The transit instrument may have been occasionally used on Capitol Hill subsequent to this time. ”

“ The instruments and apparatus are of good construction and well adapted to the work required. The personnel of the staff could not be improved; certainly not in this country and probably not abroad. The true scientific spirit prevails at the observatory, and I have found there the same distinctive atmosphere which marks the Russian observatory at Pawlowsk. There can. be no doubt but that the Blue Hill Observatory is the most successfully conducted meteorological observatory in America, and its work will compare favorably with that of European observatories of the highest class. ”

“ But if we were to push the 100-inch reflector on Mount Wilson to its limit by photography with plates of the highest sensitiveness, millions upon millions of excessively faint stars would be plainly visible on the plates which the human eye can never hope to see directly with any telescope present or future, and which would doubtless swell the total number of stars to a thousand millions. ”

“ The building is by far the largest on the ground, but in little accord with the popular idea of an astronomer as perpetually looking through a telescope, carries but a single dome; its best rooms being set apart as 'computing rooms,' for the use of those members of the staff who are employed in the calculations and other clerical work, which form, after all, much the greater portion of the Observatory routine.
An observer with the transit instrument, for instance, will take only three or four minutes to make a complete determination of the place of a single star. ”

“ And beside the enjoyment of all this entrancing spectacle of celestial beauty, the fortunate astronomer sits at his telescope and discovers—always he discovers.
This, or something like it, is a very popular conception of an astronomer's experiences and duty; and consequently many, when they are told that 'discoveries' are not made at Greenwich, are inclined to consider that the Observatory has failed in its purpose. An astronomer without 'discoveries' to his record is like an angler who casts all day and comes home without fish—obviously an idle or incompetent person. ”

“ The upper deck was the main living quarters. There were several small rooms on each side of the corridor down the center; at the extreme nose was the control room, and at the extreme stern was the observatory. The observatory was equipped with a small but exceedingly powerful telectroscope, developed from those the Nigrans had left on one of the deserted planets Sol had captured in return for the loss of Pluto to the Black Star. The arc commanded by the instrument was not great, but it was easy to turn the ship about, and most of their observations could be made without trouble. ”

“ The observatory is necessarily open to the air; snow-wreaths festoon its walls and corners. Every breath freezes on the metal and glasses of the telescope; even the vapour from the observer’s eye quickly clouds the lens. His assistant, utterly unrecognisable under a pile of furs and mufflers, stands shivering beside him, carefully keeping a chronometer from the cold, for neither watch nor chronometer will work in the temperature of Arctic night. ”

“ This was a fatal mistake, and one which it is very hard to understand how any one with a real interest in the science could have made. Men who had the spirit of 'drudges,' to whom observation was a mere 'mechanical act,' and calculation a 'dull process,' were not likely to maintain the honour of the Observatory, particularly under an absentee Astronomer Royal. ”

“ That stern disciplinarian asked what business the assistant had to be there on his free night, and on being told he was 'searching for new planets,' he was severely reprimanded and ordered to discontinue at once. A similar energy would not meet so gruff a discouragement to-day; but the routine work so fully occupies both staff and telescopes that an assistant may be most thoroughly devoted to his science, and yet pass a decade at the Observatory without ever seeing those 'show places' of the sky which an amateur would have run over in the first week after receiving his telescope. ”

“ It should be fixed at such a distance that the mark may be distinctly seen without altering the focus of the telescope when adjusted to the sun or stars, which, in most cases, will require to be at least half a mile from the place of observation, and more if it can be obtained.
Observatories may be distinguished into public and private. A private observatory may be comprehended in a comparatively small building, or in the wing of a building of ordinary dimensions for a family, provided the situation is adapted to it. ”

“ It is likely that many ground-based observatories around the world will be forced to make a significant investment in hardware such as auxiliary spotting cameras or other solutions to deal with the problem of satellite streaks. However, the effects of satellite constellations on a given observatory will depend on specifics such as aperture, etendue, pixel size, observing strategy, and other factors; for some the impact will be small and mitigations will not be required, while for others the impact will be serious. Each observatory will need to make its own assessment. ”

“ An early application of photography in this investigation was in the direction of determining the color of stars, measuring their brightness by an independent method, picturing their spectra, exhibiting the effect of atmospheric absorption of light in a series of plates covering the period of a year, and ascertaining by images of stars trailed upon the plate, the clearness and steadiness of the atmosphere.
In 1887 the Boyden fund being available, the first step was taken in the important enterprise of giving a continental expansion to the work of the observatory. ”

“ We cannot note the researches of Edison, Lockyer, or Tyndall, nor of Crookes, who has seemingly reached the molecules whence the universe is composed.
The modern observatory is a labyrinth of sensitive instruments; and when any disturbance takes place in nature, in heat, light, magnetism, or like modes of force, the apparatus note and record them.
Men are by no means satisfied. Insatiable thirst to know more is developing into a fever of unrest; they are wandering beyond the limits of the known, every day a little farther. They survey space, and interrogate the infinite ”

“ The mounting of large telescopes demands the highest engineering ability. The whole instrument, with its vast weight of a twenty-six-inch glass lens, with its accompanying tube and appurtenances, must be pointed as nicely as a rifle, and held as steadily as the axis of the globe. To give it the required steadiness, the foundation on which it is placed is sunk deep in the earth, far from rail or other roads, and no part of the observatory is allowed to touch this support. When a star is once found, the earth swiftly rotates the telescope away from it, and it passes out of the field. ”