Archives for the 'observatories' Category
Palomar Spared?
Published on 25 Oct 2007 at 6:09 pm.
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Filed under observatories.
A while back, when I was writing my series on the Seven Wonders of Astronomy, I picked the Palomar Observatory as one of the wonders. Over the last week, as news poured out of southern California about the awful fires, I gradually became more concerned about the safety of the observatory. It was […]
Mauna Kea Observatories
Published on 5 Aug 2007 at 1:33 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, observatories, telescopes, wonders.
Situated atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii are 13 telescopes funded by 11 countries: 9 optical telescopes, 2 submillimeter telescopes, 1 submillimeter array, and 1 radio telescope. All together, this comprises the Mauna Kea Observatories (or the Mauna Kea Observatory as the whole installation is sometimes called).
The optical telescopes range in size from a […]
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The European Southern Observatory
Published on 4 Aug 2007 at 7:28 pm.
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Created in 1962, the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, or as it is better known, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is a an intergovernmental astronomical organization supported by 13 nations. It isn’t really a single observatory, but a collection of observatories. Most of its facilities are in Chile. […]
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Mount Palomar Observatory
Published on 3 Aug 2007 at 12:31 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, observatories, telescopes, wonders.
Located atop Palomar Mountain in San Diego County, California, is the Palomar Observatory, operated by the California Institute of Technology.
Most famous among the instruments at Palomar Observatory is the 200-inch Hale Telescope, which was the largest telescope on Earth for close to three decades. However, the Hale Telescope is not the only instrument at […]
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The VLA
Published on 27 Jul 2007 at 10:34 am.
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Filed under astronomy, observatories, radio astronomy, wonders.
My next choice for one of the Seven Wonders of Astronomy is another radio observatory. This one is different, though, from Arecibo. Instead of a single large telescope, the Very Large Array, near Socorro, New Mexico, is a collection of 27 separate radio telescope antennae.
The Very Large Array (VLA) is operated by the National Radio […]
Yerkes Observatory
Published on 26 Jul 2007 at 12:44 pm.
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Near Williams Bay, Wisconsin, right near the shores of Lake Geneva is Yerkes Observatory, owned and operated by the University of Chicago. The Yerkes Observatory is famous for housing the 40-inch Yerkes Refractor, the largest refracting telescope ever put into service, and for a while the largest telescope of any sort in operation in […]
Arecibo Observatory
Published on 25 Jul 2007 at 11:59 pm.
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Filed under astronomy, observatories, radio astronomy, wonders.
The National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, aka the Arecibo Observatory, is the site of the largest single dish radio telescope (or any other telescope, for that matter) on Earth, and I wrote about it once before. The facility is located just outside of the town of Arecibo, in Puerto Rico. The telescope’s dish […]
