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Personal experiences with large telescopes.

The title of this post is wrong, but the talk about Palomar being the
perfect machine prompts this reply.

As a youth, I visited Palomar shortly after the mirror had been first
tried. Its surface had to be changed from parabolic to hyperbolic, and
that process was going on then. I could actually "kick the tires" of the
mirror. Normally, visitors were not allowed in the room, since their body
heat would upset the balance.

More recently, our travel agent specializes in astronomy vacations, and
he found that he could rent the Mount Wilson telescopes for a quite
reasonable price. We first used the sixty inch one, the first ever large
telescope, to look at Mars and other objects. Later, he rented the 100
inch one, and we looked at Mars at its closest approach in 60,000 years.
They had a Mickey Mouse viewing setup, but we could actually look through
the telescope. We were told that the mirror was superior to the Palomar
one, because it had been figured to near perfection. The Palomar one was
figured only to the precision then needed. But with modern electronic
enhancements, the 100 inch one is better. The construction of these
telescopes was quite a feat, since nothing like that had ever been done
before. That the 100 inch telescope looks like a battleship is because
the only contractor who could build something that large was a
shipbuilder. The telescope is floated in Mercury to take the load off the
bearings.

Fascinating.

Jim Wilson
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