Blog #7

Mount Wilson is located in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and Angeles National Forest located in Los Angeles County, California. Mount Wilson is where you can find the Mount Wilson Observatory. The Mount Wilson Observatory is an astronomical center with large solar towers. The observatory has two historical telescopes. The Hooker telescope was one of the two; which was built in 1917 and was the largest at the time. Most recently in 2004, the CHARA array was built by Georgia State University, which is currently the largest optical interferometer in the world. George Ellery Hale founded the Observatory in 1904. He previously visited the Mt. Wilson in 1903 and thought it was the perfect place to set up an observatory. In 1904 Hale signed a lease for 99 years with the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The first telescope on Mount Wilson was the Snow Solar Telescope. The telescope was portable and Hale brought the telescope from the Yerkes Observatory in southern Wisconsin. The main purpose the telescope was so that Hale could continue his studies of the sun. Hale brought with him a small team of Yerkes scientists and engineers to help him along the way. The most historic moment for them was in 1917 when they completed the Hooker telescope.
The Hooker telescope is 100 inches. When it was completed in 1917 the size was unimaginable. John D. Hooker donated $45,000 to the creation of the larger telescope. The $45,000 went into the creation of the mirror of the telescope. The glass disk was ordered from the French Plate Glass Companies in St. Gobain, France. Parts of telescope were tested and created in the “Hooker building” which was the Observatory headquarters in Pasadena. Getting the mirror to Mount Wilson was no easy task. A truck on a dirt road carried it. Nearly 200 men followed the mirror on the 8-hour journey up the mountain.
            Edwin Hubble was one of the many astronomers to us The Hooker telescope to make ground breaking discoveries. Hubble arrived at Mount Wilson in 1919. During this time it was thought that the universe consisted of the Milky Way Galaxy. Hubble discovered Cepheid variables in many different spiral nebulae. These nebulae proved that they were entire galaxies outside our own. His discoveries with the Hooker Telescope changed the idea of the nature of the universe and led to the idea of the “Big Bang” theory. Hubble’s discoveries paved the way for many future astronomers.
The Hooker telescope was no longer the largest telescope in 1948 when the 200-inch Hale telescope was built at Palomar Observatory in San Diego. Around the 80’s the focus was primarily deep space observation. Deep space observation requires darker skies than what can be found in the Los Angeles area because of the light pollution. Today the use of the Hooker telescope is mostly for public use.



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