Palomar pics

sorry it took so long.. here are a few pictures:

Itamar, demonstrating how dry the air was. When we try to show a similar effect to students in TA, we need to turn the A/C on full blast, and dry the air with a hair-dryer... On Palomar, it occurred naturally.

Inside the dome of the Palomar 60" telescope. the images look red because the very faint lights inside the dome were red, to help the observers not loose their night vision. i took long exposures (about 20-30 seconds), that's why it looks so bright. to the naked eye, the dome was quite dark and if not careful, we would stumble upon all the kids. i don't know who the people on the left picture are, but the telescope is looking at jupiter, which you can see through the hatch in the dome. in the picture on the right, you can see Eran looking through the telescope. he had to stand there without moving for 20 seconds.


This is the Hale 200'' telescope at Palomar. it's huge. really. and the done is one of the biggest in the world, since this telescope is the largest one that operates on such a mount (one part of it is pointing directly to the north, so it takes more space when it moves around)


In the control room, just by the telescope. Eran's in charge of the instruments (cameras, filters, exposure times, etc.) and Jean at the back is in charge of the telescope itself (pointing it, acquiring the guide-star, opening and closing the dome...).



The Hale 20'' telescope, at night. in this 30'' exposure you can barely make the telescope inside the dome, but the milky way is clearly seen, as the whitish "cloud" crossing from the bottom right of the picture to its top. the constellation Sagittarius or Teapot marks the center of the galaxy. the red clouds, are illuminated by city lights from San Diego bay. although they don't do any good to astronomy pictures, i think they add an interesting feature to the picture.
[sky maps]


A long exposure inside the dome.