Rubel Castle, Communal Kitchen

You may remember our good friend Craig Woods, the Superintendent at Mount Wilson Observatory. Craig invited us to a special Sunday potluck breakfast at Rubel Castle, otherwise known as Rubel Farms, or simply, "the Pharm." Craig also introduced us to Scott Rubel, who grew up at the Castle and is now the Facilities Manager at the Carnegie Observatories.

I hope you're following this, because I'm not sure I am.

By the way, it's pronounced roo-BELL.

I make decent granola. I thought it would be good to bring some to a breakfast potluck. But I asked, just in case. Craig said we should bring donuts.

Donuts? Really? We discussed it and decided: if Craig wants donuts, he shall have donuts. We kept the granola for ourselves, and hoped other people would bring something healthy.

Apparently there's a tradition. Newbies are roped into bringing donuts and basically no one eats them. I had two. (Others managed to grab a few as well, so it wasn't a total loss.) Everyone thought it was funny that we fell for it and everyone was nice. AND there was plenty of healthy food to eat.

There are six apartments at the Pharm, most of them occupied by resident artists. Once a month they hold a potluck breakfast and invite friends. Some people are regulars. It felt special to be there enjoying something different, meeting new people, seeing folks I knew, feeling included.

Every single corner of the Pharm holds something weird or wonderful or old or special. There are too many photos to take. You will not see everything here on the blog because it would be impossible to show it all. But there's more, and I'll do my best.

Carnegie Observatories, III

Today we know this as the Andromeda galaxy, or M31. But it was known as the Andromeda nebula when this negative was taken. Edwin Hubble crossed out the "n" (which meant nova) and wrote "VAR!" in bright red, indicating he had found a variable star in the Andromeda nebula. "That first discovery of a variable star meant he could measure distance to Andromeda and show that it was in fact very, very far away and not part of our Milky Way at all," says Dr. Cindy Hunt, Caltech PhD and head of Social Media for the Carnegie Observatories. This unique plate shows Hubble's search for more variable stars in Andromeda, and you can even see "V4!!!" in Hubble's handwriting.

Even though we visited the one building in Pasadena (designed by Myron Hunt), The Carnegie Observatories is plural because it's several different observatories supported by private donations and endowments. For the last couple of posts we've been talking about the Carnegie Observatories' archive of glass plates: "astrophoto" negatives of space taken in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries.

Halley's comet, 1910.

I love the wooden boxes. Each is unique. But Dr. Hunt knows where everything is.

Not a great photo, but I like it. The Moon in a hand-labeled filing cabinet continues the theme of "a hundred years of boggling the mind."

This developed negative of the moon is from 1919. Think of how brand new it all was then. It's been nearly a hundred years. Have you seen the latest images from Pluto?

Cindy shows me glass plates. We looked at the moon, the sun, comets, galaxies, you name it.

I think she likes her job.

Cindy showed us a lot, but there was one thing she couldn't show us.

The original plate, the one Edwin Hubble took when he knew he'd discovered the expansion of the universe, is not kept here. It's too valuable. What we saw was a fine replica.

You can see many of these glass plates, and other exciting space stuff old and new, at the Carnegie Observatories Open House on Sunday, October 18th 2-5 pm. Be sure to RSVP! It's a family-friendly event. Check out one of Pasadena's little secrets.

Carnegie Observatories, II

Dr. Cindy Hunt, Caltech PhD and head of Social Media for the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, pushes open the door to the vault. My mouth gapes wider than the door. This is just the kind of thing I love: an archive—a photo archive of a different sort.

This archive is replete with glass plates—negatives of "astrophotographs" taken from telescopes pointing into all depths and directions of space. This one of the sun, from August 17, 1935, was taken from Mount Wilson's Solar Telescope. Click to enlarge it so you can see the flares of 80 years ago.

The glass plate negatives come in all sizes. Here, Cindy's holding a glass spectra of a sun spot, made in 1919 at Mount Wilson Observatory. Cindy says, "You can easily identify the Zeeman splitting in the calcium-H and K lines in the spectrum on the top row." I'm going to take her word for it. "Part of the early discoveries about the sun at the Carnegie Observatories was using these spectra to show that sun spots are far cooler than the rest of the sun, and have strong magnetic fields," she says.

In the background are boxes and boxes of the history of the universe, depicted on glass plates.

More glass plates. Those numbers on the boxes are dates: 1920. 1916. 1917.

"George Ellery Hale had a telescope in his back yard at his childhood home in Chicago, known as the Kenwood Observatory," says Dr. Hunt. "When Hale moved to Pasadena to build the first telescope on Mount Wilson in 1904, he brought these plates with him, known as the Kenwood Plates."

Thus, the years written on the boxes are 1894. 1895. 1892. 

On and on with the glass plates. The universe is pretty big! And astronomers at Mount Wilson Observatory have been photographing it for more than 100 years.

Carnegie's history is and will always be intertwined with that of Mount Wilson and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), but they're no longer officially affiliated. The Carnegie Observatories is an international research conglomerate. The astrophysics being done here is very much of the future. But these glass plates, depicting the astronomy of the past, are immensely valuable to science and history. That is to say, they're priceless. That, and the fact that they're sensitive to heat and light, is why they're kept in a vault. That's why the public rarely sees them.

That's why you should go to the Carnegie Observatories family-friendly Open House on Sunday, October 18th, 2-5pm, when some of these plates will be on display. Be sure to RSVP!

Carnegie Observatories, I

Here's a familiar face.

Everybody knows Albert Einstein spent a good deal of time in Pasadena in the 1930's, lecturing at Caltech, visiting JPL and Mount Wilson, and generally being a science ambassador around Los Angeles.

Here's a center of astronomy that Einstein visited but many Pasadenans don't know about: the Carnegie Observatories. I don't think there are any telescopes in the building but even if there are, in the middle of a residential neighborhood on a residential street, most of the science here is being done on computers and in brains. A huge part of their work, however, comes from Carnegie Observatories' telescopes at Las Campanas in Chile.

Lovely little library, isn't it?

That's George Ellery Hale in the painted portrait. Hale was the idea man behind so much of what are now historical observatories, including Mount Wilson Observatory. He was even instrumental in the design of Pasadena's beautiful City Hall Plaza, where one of the buildings is named for him.

In the photograph you see, among others, Edwin Hubble (the tall guy, second from left). Hubble is most known for discovering and proving the expansion of the universe. He also figured out that a lot of what had been thought to be nebulae were, in fact, galaxies. Imagine how all those galaxies boggled minds when they hadn't been considered before.

I think you can pick out Professor Einstein in the picture.

J and I were invited to visit the Observatories by Dr. Cindy Hunt, a Caltech PhD and head of Carnegie's Social Media efforts. In the next couple of posts, Dr. Hunt's going to lead us to some places the public never sees.

We'll visit deep space via the deep, dark basement of the Carnegie Observatories. Stay with us.

In the mean time, mark your calendar for Sunday, October 18th from 2-5pm for the Carnegie Observatories open house. Click on the link and give them an RSVP, s'il vous plait.

Mt. Wilson Observatory: A Great Adventure

The grand finale of the Mt. Wilson Observatory tour is the 100-inch telescope. Here, Edwin Hubble worked to discover his theory of the expansion of the universe. Yep. Major important stuff.

Notice anything different about how the roof of this facility opens, as opposed to the roof at the 60-inch I posted about the other day? Our guide, Observatory Superintendent Craig Woods, explained that after the 60-inch was built it was discovered that this vertical opening, as opposed to the horizontal one at the 60-inch, made for a stronger structure. 

By the way, Craig has been known to climb up to the top of the roof. 

But he's no fool, he gets strapped onto a safety catch.

The 100-inch (that refers to the diameter of the mirror) is a big telescope, though there now larger ones in the world.  

John took this picture of me and Craig at the 100-inch.

He also took a couple of great panoramas of the inside of the telescope housing. Click on these to enlarge. 

They're pretty cool.

This one really shows how big the space is. Craig and I are over on the left. We're looking into a hole in the floor. It's a sort of trap door big enough for a giant to keep his lunchbox in. The Observatory is keeping the top part of the 100-inch telescope there.

The two telescope-looking things here really are scoping devices for the 100-inch. And there are buttons. And stuff. I was just trying to explain Steampunk to Craig when we came upon this.  

I think if any one thing can convey Mt. Wilson's past, present and future importance it's this building, this telescope. Hubble's discovery was seminal. He made it here, sitting on a bentwood chair, measuring the movements he saw in the skies. There may be more powerful telescopes in the world now, but even those still observe what he discovered here.

We met Larry S. Webster, the Site Manager for CHARA, the Center for high Angular Resolution Astronomy, a project of Georgia State University. Larry has been with Mt. Wilson for 37 years. He lives there, with his wife and daughter. (What a childhood! That kid is on a first name basis with every squirrel on the mountain.) Larry told amazing stories about a building in Pasadena that was once part of the Carnegie Observatories. Just before the building was to be torn down, with all the old records in it, Larry went in with a flashlight (because the electricity had already been turned off) and rescued everything he could fit on his truck. He couldn't get it all and some things were lost. But many precious papers, records, and items are now preserved, thanks to him. I hope these will one day be part of a Mount Wilson Museum and archive here on the mountain.

There's a board of directors. They are thinking of ways to keep the place alive. Let's listen for the call and take part when it comes.

For now, join the Friends of Mount Wilson Observatory. Take a day to go on up there. It's a vigorous hike, or a leisurely drive. Have a hot dog, chili, or pie at the Cosmic Cafe. 

 And enjoy your discoveries.

Carnegie Observatories Open House

If you were not at the Carnegie Observatories open house last weekend (and you might have been, it was crowded), you missed the Hale Library, which, predictably, was my favorite part. I have a thing for libraries.

The Observatories building, designed by Myron Hunt and hiding in a residential area on Santa Barbara Street, is not often open to the public, so I was excited to snoop around inside. There's an expansive interior yard, a machine shop my husband would trade the house, me, and even the dog for, and some solar telescopes I didn't get to see because the line was too long. And more. Science. It takes up space.

The Hale Library is named for George Ellery Hale, one of Pasadena's most multi-talented early citizens. An astronomer, he founded Mount Wilson Observatory among others, and also mentored Edwin Hubble. Hale was a civic minded type, instrumental in how Pasadena's civic center was laid out. The Pasadena Permit Center building, kitty-corner to City Hall, is named for him.

The open house was pretty cool. I got a lot of pictures. I'll pepper them in here on the old blog from time to time. To take this picture, my camera looked through a pair of Rainbow Glasses (made in Reseda!) that demonstrated a fancy-looking machine so popular I never got near it.

Were you there in the crowd? If you got a look at that machine I'll be interested to know what you saw through your Rainbow Glasses.

Observers

This little-known gem is part of The Carnegie Observatories, a venerable institution that's been around since 1904, when George Hale got the idea to hit up the Carnegie institute for the money.

The simple, classically-styled building pops up at 813 Santa Barbara Street, a residential side street off of Lake Avenue. If traffic never got tight on Lake you might not know it was there. Hey! You can observe them! They give tours! And they're having an open house November 16th.

The plaque dedicates the building to George Ellery Hale, the first director of the Observatory, and notes that the "building was erected in 1912. Myron Hunt, Architect." Mr. Hunt designed many of Pasadena's most beautiful homes including that of Henry E. Huntington (now a gallery of the Huntington Library), as well as such other southern California landmarks as Occidental College in Eagle Rock, Pasadena's Public Library and the Rose Bowl.

Here's a side door. The sign in the window says "no skateboarding." I picture guys and gals with Einstein hair, whipping their wheels off that porch and onto the sidewalk.