George Hale 60 inch Telescope

USA / California / Sierra Madre /
 observatory, research, telescope
Completed in December 1908. First of the "giant" 20th century telescopes. First to resolve extra-galactic "nebulae" as stars rather than gas clouds. The 1.5 meter primary mirror blank was cast in France in 1894 and given to Hale (by his father) two years later when the younger Hale was director of Yerkes Observatory. A Carnegie foundation grant (granted by Andy Carnegie himself) allowed Hale to take the mirror out west and build a new state-of-the-art observatory one mile above sea level.
An adaptive optics system installed in 1992 increased resolving power by a factor of ten and extended the useful life as a primary research instrument by several years.
The telescope is now available for the general public to use for visual observation, for a fee of 650 dollars for a half-night (i.e. until midnight). To spread the cost around, the Mt. Wison Institute allows star parties of up to 25 people. Saturday nights tend to be booked up well in advance.
Black and white photo shows the new telescope as it apeared in 1908, with a prism spectrograph mounted on the primary mirror cell.
*** This instrument will soon complete it's first 100 years of nearly continuous operation. Hale did not believe in planned obsolescence!
Tidbit of astronomical lore:
Ever since day one, the siderial drive train has had a glitch in it, some sort of periodic backlash, and they've never been able to get it fixed. What this means is that when an astronomer was making an extended exposure of a photographic plate, he had to keep a keen eye on the cross hairs and a deft touch on the controls, ready to correct for a sporadic lurch in the tracking.
(As in the photo above, dated April 1949.)
Therefore, for generations of Caltech graduate students, this instrument was considered to be the acid test for whether they could endure a long cold night on top of a mountain while maintaining manual contol over some really big glass.
Close up photo of the modern electronic control panel illustrates how much easier such matters are to deal with now days.
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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hale
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   34°13'28"N   118°3'26"W

Comments

  • Some inaccuracies here - 1. The telescope is not the "George Hale 60 inch Telescope". It is called the "60 inch Telescope" - never had someone's name associated with it. 2. 60 inches is 1.524 meters. 3. 2012 fees are $900 for a half night, $1700 for a full night. 4. Not sure of where the "glitch" reference came from, or any thing that had to be "fixed". Both the 60" and 100" required this photographic plate manipulation as a standard mode of operation for guiding.
This article was last modified 2 years ago