research June 19, 2014

SPAAAAACE! (Part I)

By Alison Lui

The Saga Begins

When I decided to come to Caltech there was at least one major thing on my bucket list: Visit JPL. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was founded by Caltech students back in the 60s and ever since, it has enabled the United States to do incredible space exploration and incredible research. Reasons in particular why I wanted to visit JPL:

1) It’s only a free bus ride away.

2) It’s completely operated by Caltech staff.

3) The Curiosity Rover had just been launched.

4) I heard something about NASA stopping all space programs, and wanted to know what was going on..

5) I was pretty sure that if I kept my eyes open, I’d be able to find out some top secret spy information, etc.

So, you can be sure that when I was registering for the classes I wanted to take for third term of my freshman year, I didn’t hesitate to click the button for “Introduction to Astrophysics”, or “Ay 1”. Let me be clear, I knew nothing about astronomy and certainly had no background in astrophysics.

And it was… AWESOME.

By far my favorite class of this term, Ay 1 had a SUPER knowledgeable professors, the BEST T.A.’s, fantastically interesting subject material that I’d never learned before, and … drum roll please … a FIELD TRIP. Yes, you heard (read) me right. The Ay 1 class members boarded two charter buses just last weekend and drove down to San Diego to visit the Palomar Observatory. Here are some of the interesting pictures and stories that follow:

On one side of the bus, a beautiful mountain range and graceful clouds streaking the sky. (You can’t see it, but we’re on top of a cliff).

And on the other side, this big ole’ dome:

My first thought, stepping off the bus was “Ah, and here we see the mountain’s bald spot, sticking out like a sore thumb among the bushes”. But oh, was there more …

As “special guests” of the Observatory, we got to use “the big doors”.

No, that’s the small door. I mean, the BIG DOORS. also… hi, Peter… :)

Download DSCN2011

Once inside, we went straight up to the second floor to see the telescope itself.

^ Suspended above the floor was the 60’’ telescope. Made of one huge glass surface. Our guide told us of how this lens itself took almost forty years to design, craft, perfect, and install.

^The upper observation deck was all the way at the top of the telescope shaft. This reached all the way to the top of the dome and serves as a stable base for the rotating parts of the telescope.

^Here’s a closer look at the lens holding machinery. The glass itself is held in that circular area with the black dots all the way around it.

Interestingly, the glass lens of the Palomar telescope is made out of solid Pyrex glass – as in, the same thing a lot of your baking supplies are made of. Back in the 1920s when the telescope was being designed, they needed a material that wouldn’t move or shift during temperature changes. Using a material that could adapt so easily without changing its shape allowed for the telescope to be calibrated accurately and provide good measurements consistently, from summer to winter up on the mountaintop.

We finished our tour of the massive telescope and waited back outside for the group to get back together.