Post #7 Mt. Wilson

Mt. Wilson History and Discoveries
The Mount Wilson Observatory was founded by George Ellery Halle. The Observatory was originally a station for the yerkes Observatory, but was soon acquired and funded by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. With the addition of a physics laboratory and administrative and maintenance office in Pasadena, the Mt. Wilson Observatory was first comprehensive observatory complex in the world.
Halle was an astronomer who discovered magnetic fields in sunspots and helped create the 60 inch Hale telescope and 100 inch Hooker telescope which are located on Mt. Wilson.The Hale telescope was finished in 1908 and was the largest telescope in the world until the creation of the 100 inch Hooker telescope which was remained the largest telescope in the world from 1917 through 1949. In 1949 the Palomar Observatory telescope was finished in San Diego, and was the new largest telescope. Until the Palomar Observatory, Mt. Wilson was reigned as the epicenter of astronomical observation and discovery.
In 1919, Albert A. Michelson created a 6 meter astronomical interferometer that was attached to the telescope. This enabled the telescope to produce higher resolution images of objects in the sky like stars and nebulas. The addition of the interferometer allowed Michelson to determine the diameter of stars which had never been done before and made Mt. Wilson a location for astronomical spectroscopy. Spectroscopy is the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation.
Another astronomer Harlow Shapley, used measurements from the 60 inch telescope to discover that the sun was just another star in the Milky Way and not the center of the universe.

The Hooker telescope is perhaps most famous in astronomical history for its use by Edwin Hubble. Hubble used the telescope to discover that the Universe is not only larger than the Milky Way galaxy, but that it is also expanding. He discovered that the Andromeda Galaxy is its own galaxy by identifying that blurry shapes at the edge of the Milky Way were not clouds of dust but galaxies far beyond the edges of the Milky Way. Hubble also observed that these galaxies were moving in all directions and that the further away the galaxy, the faster it was moving. This observation contributed to the formation of the Big Bang Theory and proved that the universe is expanding.



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