Palomar Observatory

Hale's vision for large telescopes and Palomar Observatory

Astronomer George Ellery Hale, whose vision created Palomar Observatory, built the world's largest telescope four times in succession.^[8] He published a 1928 article proposing what was to become the 200-inch Palomar reflector; it was an invitation to the American public to learn about how large telescopes could help answer questions relating to the fundamental nature of the universe. Hale followed this article with a letter to the International Education Board (later absorbed into the General Education Board) of the Rockefeller Foundation dated April 16, 1928, in which he requested funding for this project. In his letter, Hale stated:

"No method of advancing science is so productive as the development of new and more powerful instruments and methods of research. A larger telescope would not only furnish the necessary gain in light space-penetration and photographic resolving power, but permit the application of ideas and devices derived chiefly from the recent fundamental advances in physics and chemistry."

Hale Telescope

The 200-inch telescope is named after astronomer and telescope builder George Ellery Hale. It was built by Caltech with a $6 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, using a Pyrex blank manufactured by Corning Glass Works under the direction of George McCauley. Dr. J.A. Anderson was the initial project manager, assigned in the early 1930s.^[9] The telescope (the largest in the world at that time) saw first light January 26, 1949, targeting NGC 2261.^[10] The American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble was the first astronomer to use the telescope.

The 200-inch telescope was the largest telescope in the world from 1949 until 1975, when the Russian BTA-6 telescope saw first light. Astronomers using the Hale Telescope have discovered quasars (a subset of what was to become known as Active Galactic Nuclei) at cosmological distances. They have studied the chemistry of stellar populations, leading to an understanding of the stellar nucleosynthesis as to origin of elements in the universe in their observed abundances, and have discovered thousands of asteroids. A one-tenth-scale engineering model of the telescope at Corning Community College in Corning, New York, home of the Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated), was used to discover at least one minor planet, 34419 Corning.†

Architecture and design

Russell W. Porter developed the Art Deco architecture of the Observatory's buildings, including the dome of the 200-inch Hale Telescope. Porter was also responsible for much of the technical design of the Hale Telescope and Schmidt Cameras, producing a series of cross-section engineering drawings. Porter worked on the designs in collaboration with many engineers and Caltech committee members.^[11][12][13]

Max Mason directed the construction and Theodore von Karman was involved in the engineering.

Directors

• Ira Sprague Bowen, 1948–1964
• Horace Welcome Babcock, 1964–1978
• Maarten Schmidt, 1978–1980
• Gerry Neugebauer, 1980–1994
• James Westphal, 1994–1997
• Wallace Leslie William Sargent, 1997–2000
• Richard Ellis, 2000–2006
• Shrinivas Kulkarni, 2006–2018
• Jonas Zmuidzinas, 2018–

Palomar Observatory and light pollution

Much of the surrounding region of Southern California has adopted shielded lighting to reduce the light pollution that would potentially affect the observatory.^[14]

Decommissioned instruments

• An 18-inch (46 cm) Schmidt camera became the first operational telescope at the Palomar in 1936. In the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky and Walter Baade advocated adding survey telescopes at Palomar, and the 18-inch was developed to demonstrate the Schmidt concept. Zwicky used the 18-inch to discover over 100 supernovae in other galaxies. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered with this instrument in 1993. It has since been decommissioned and is on display at the small museum/visitor center.^[20][21]
• The Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) was a multi-telescope instrument that made high-angular-resolution measurements of the apparent sizes and relative positions of stars. The apparent sizes and in some cases shapes of bright stars were measured with PTI, as well as the apparent orbits of multiple stellar systems. PTI operated from 1995 to 2008.^[22]
• The Palomar Planet Search Telescope (PPST), also known as Sleuth, was a 10-centimetre (3.9 in) robotic telescope that operated from 2003 until 2008. It was dedicated to the search for planets around other stars using the transit method. It operated in conjunction with telescopes at Lowell Observatory and in the Canary Islands as part of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES).^[23]

POSS-I

The initial Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS or POSS-I), sponsored by the National Geographic Institute, was completed in 1958. The first plates were exposed in November 1948 and the last in April 1958. This survey was performed using 14-inch² (6-degree²) blue-sensitive (Kodak 103a-O) and red-sensitive (Kodak 103a-E) photographic plates on the Oschin Telescope. The survey covered the sky from a declination of +90° (celestial north pole) to −27° 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° declination was shot in 1957–1958. The final POSS I dataset consisted of 937 plate pairs.

The Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) produced images which were based on the photographic data developed in the course of POSS-I.^[24]

J.B. Whiteoak, an Australian radio astronomer, used the same instrument to extend POSS-I data south to −42° declination. Whiteoak's observations used using the same field centers as the corresponding northern declination zones. Unlike POSS-I, the Whiteoak extension consisted only of red-sensitive (Kodak 103a-E) photographic plates.

POSS-II

The Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II, sometimes Second Palomar Sky Survey) was performed in the 1980s and 1990s and made use of better, faster films and an upgraded telescope. The Oschin Schmidt was upgraded with an achromatic corrector and provisions for autoguiding. Images were recorded in three wavelengths: blue (IIIaJ. 480 nm), red (IIIaF, 650 nm), and near-infrared (IVN, 850 nm) plates. Observers on POSS II included C. Brewer, D. Griffiths, W. McKinley, J. Dave Mendenhall, K. Rykoski, Jeffrey L. Phinney, and Jean Mueller (who discovered over 100 supernovae by comparing the POSS I and POSS II plates). Mueller also discovered several comets and minor planets during the course of POSS II, and the bright Comet Wilson 1986 was discovered by then-graduate-student C. Wilson early in the survey.^[25]

Until the completion of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), POSS II was the most extensive wide-field sky survey. When completed, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey will surpass POSS I and POSS II in depth, although the POSS covers almost 2.5 times more area on the sky.

POSS II also exists in digitized form (that is, the photographic plates were scanned) as part of the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS).^[26]

QUEST

The multi-year POSS projects were followed by the Palomar Quasar Equatorial Survey Team (QUEST) Variability survey.^[27] This survey yielded results that were used by several projects, including the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking project. Another program that used the QUEST results discovered 90377 Sedna on 14 November 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's search for supernovae to test whether the universe's expansion is accelerating or not, and S. George Djorgovski's quasar search.

The camera for the Palomar QUEST Survey was a mosaic of 112 charge-coupled devices (CCDs) covering the whole (4° × 4°) field of view of the Schmidt telescope. At the time it was built, it was the largest CCD mosaic used in an astronomical camera. This instrument was used to produce The Big Picture, the largest astronomical photograph ever produced.^[28] The Big Picture is on display at Griffith Observatory.

Current research

Current research programs on the 200-inch Hale Telescope cover the range of the observable universe, including studies on near-Earth asteroids, outer Solar System planets, Kuiper Belt objects, star formation, exoplanets,^[29] black holes and x-ray binaries, supernovae and other transient source followup, and quasars/Active Galactic Nuclei.^[30]

The 48-inch Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope operates robotically, and supports a new transient astronomy sky survey, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF).^[5]

The 60-inch telescope operates robotically, and supports ZTF by providing rapid, low-dispersion optical spectra for initial transient classification using the for-purpose Spectral Energy Distribution Machine (SEDM)^[31] integral field spectrograph.