Palomar Observatory is a privately-owned observatory located in San Diego County, California, 90 miles (145 km) southeast of Mount Wilson Observatory, on Palomar Mountain. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The observatory currently consists of four main instruments: the 200 inch (5.08 m) Hale Telescope, the 48 inch (1.22 m) Samuel Oschin Telescope, the 18 inch (457 mm) Schmidt telescope, and a 60 inch (1.52 m) reflecting telescope. In addition, the Palomar Testbed Interferometer is located at this observatory. Observatory of Strasbourg An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial and/or celestial events. ... Location Location of San Diego County within California. ... The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California. ... Palomar Observatory is a privately-owned observatory located in San Diego County, California, 90 miles (145 km) southeast of Mount Wilson Observatory, on Palomar Mountain. ... The California Institute of Technology (commonly known as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... Mid-19th century tool for converting between different standards of the inch An inch is an Imperial and U.S. customary unit of length. ... The Hale Telescope is the largest telescope at the Palomar Observatory. ... The Samuel Oschin telescope is a 48-inch (1. ... The Palomar Testbed Interferometer is a near-IR, long-baseline stellar interferometer located at Palomar Observatory in north San Diego County. ...

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (commonly known as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... Location Location of San Diego County within California. ... 2m Schmidt Camera (Alfred-Jensch-Telescope Tautenburg, Thuringia, Germany A Schmidt camera is an astronomical camera designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. ... Interferometry is the applied science of combining two or more input points of a particular data type, such as optical measurements, to form a greater picture based on the combination of the two sources. ...

The Hale Telescope

This 200 inch (5.08 m) telescope is named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. It was built by a Caltech-Carnegie Institution consortium using a Pyrex blank manufactured by Corning Glass Works. The telescope (the largest in the world at that time) saw 'first light' in 1949. George Ellery Hale (June 29, 1868 – February 21, 1938) was an American astronomer. ... The Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) is a foundation established by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 to support scientific research. ... Pyrex is a brand name of borosilicate glass introduced by Corning Glass Works in 1924. ... Corning Glass Works (NYSE: GLW) is a U.S. manufacturer of glass, ceramics and related materials, primarily for technical and scientific applications. ...

The Hale Telescope is operated by a consortium of Caltech, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Cornell University. [1] The Hale Telescope is the largest telescope at the Palomar Observatory. ... The Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Pasadena, California builds and operates unmanned spacecraft for NASA. JPL-run projects include the Galileo Jupiter mission and the Mars rovers, including the 1997 Mars Pathfinder and the twin 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers. ... For other uses of the name Cornell, see Cornell (disambiguation). ...

For a history of the 200 inch (5.08 m) instrument's construction find a copy of The Perfect Machine by Ronald Florence, ISBN 0-06-018205-9.

Palomar Observatory Sky Survey

The Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS), sponsored by the National Geographic institute, was completed in 1958 (The first plates were shot in November 1948 to and the last in April 1958). This survey was performed using 14 inch² or (6 degree)² blue-sensitive (Kodak 103a-O) and red-sensitive (Kodak 103a-E) photographic plates on the 48 inch (1.22 m) Samuel Oschin Schmidt reflecting telescope. The survey covered the sky from a declination of +90 degrees (celestial north pole) to -27 degrees and all right ascensions and had a sensitivity to +22 magnitudes (about 1 million times fainter than the limit of human vision). A southern extension extending the sky coverage of the POSS to -33 degrees declination was shot in 1957 - 1958. The final POSS consisted of 937 plate pairs. The National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (NGS-POSS) is a major photographic survey of the night sky completed at Palomar Observatory in 1958. ... The National Geographic Society was founded in the USA on January 27, 1888, by 33 men interested in organizing a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge. ... 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A degree (or in full a degree of arc), usually symbolized °, is a measurement of plane angle, representing 1/360 of a full rotation. ... A reflector can mean one of several things: a reflecting telescope a device or a part of an antenna that reflects radio waves a device that causes reflection, for example, a mirror or a retroreflector a 1981 album by Pablo Cruise In LAPACK the term reflector with the types block... In astronomy, declination (dec) is one of the two coordinates of the equatorial coordinate system, the other being either right ascension or hour angle. ... For other uses of the word pole, see Pole (disambiguation). ... Right ascension (RA; symbol α: Greek letter alpha) is the astronomical term for one of the two coordinates of a point on the celestial sphere when using the equatorial coordinate system. ... The apparent magnitude (m) of a star, planet or other heavenly body is a measure of its apparent brightness; that is, the amount of light received from the object. ... In astronomy, declination (dec) is one of the two coordinates of the equatorial coordinate system, the other being either right ascension or hour angle. ... 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

J.B. Whiteoak, an Australian radio astronomer, used the same instrument to extend this survey further south to about -45 degrees declination, using the same field centers as the corresponding northern declination zones. Unlike the POSS, the Whiteoak extension consisted only of red-sensitive (Kodak 103a-E) photographic plates. In astronomy, declination (dec) is one of the two coordinates of the equatorial coordinate system, the other being either right ascension or hour angle. ...

Until the completion of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), POSS was the most extensive wide-field sky survey ever. When completed, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey will surpass the POSS in depth, although the POSS covers almost 2.5 times as much area on the sky. POSS also exists in digitized form (i.e., the photographic plates were scanned), both in photographic form as the Digital Sky Survey (DSS) [2] and in catalog form as the Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner (MAPS) Catalog [3]. Observations for the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) began in 1997 and were completed in 2001 at two telescopes located one each in the northern and southern hemispheres (Mt. ... The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major redshift survey using a dedicated 2. ...

Current research

One of the current ongoing research programs at Palomar is the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking program. Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) is a program run by NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory to discover near-Earth objects. ...

This program makes use of the Palomar QUEST Variability survey [4] that began in the autumn of 2001 to map a band of sky around the equator. This search switched to a new camera installed on the 48 inch (1.22 m) Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope at Palomar in summer of 2003 and the results are used by several projects, including the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking project. Another program that uses the QUEST results discovered 90377 Sedna on November 14, 2003, and around 40 Kuiper belt objects. Other programs that share the camera are Shri Kulkarni's search for gamma-ray bursts (this takes advantage of the automated telescope's ability to react as soon as a burst is seen and take a series of snapshots of the fading burst), Richard Ellis' search for supernovae to test whether the universe's expansion is accelerating or not, and S. George Djorgovski's quasar search. Ritchey 24 reflecting telescope A reflecting telescope (reflector) is an optical telescope which uses mirrors, rather than lenses, to reflect light. ... Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) is a program run by NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory to discover near-Earth objects. ... 90377 Sedna is a trans-Neptunian object, discovered by Michael Brown (Caltech), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory) and David Rabinowitz (Yale University) on November 14, 2003. ... November 14 is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 47 days remaining. ... 2003(MMIII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Artists rendering of the Kuiper Belt and more distant Oort cloud. ... In astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays that last from seconds to hours, the longer ones being followed by several days of X-ray afterglow. ... Richard Ellis is the Steele Professor of Astronomy and Director, Caltech Optical Observatories, at the California Institute of Technology. ... Remnant of Keplers Supernova, SN 1604. ... This view, taken with infrared light, is a false-color image of a quasar-starburst tandem with the most luminous starburst ever seen in such a combination. ...

The camera itself is a mosaic of 112 CCDs covering the whole (4 degree by 4 degree) field of view of the Schmidt telescope, the largest CCD mosaic used in an astronomical camera at the time. A specially developed CCD used for ultraviolet imaging in a wire bonded package. ...

External links

• Caltech Astronomy
• The SBO Palomar Sky Survey Prints
• Palomar Observatory Weather
• The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope by Ronald Florence, ISBN 0060926708
• Maps and aerial photos
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  • Topographic map from TopoZone
  • Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
  • Satellite image from Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth