So, this past week, we got around to talking about different kinds of telescopes, and how they work. I decided to look a little more into the Palomar observatory, since 1) it's fairly close to Riverside, and 2) I just like the name for some reason. The thing I find particularly amusing about Palomar's history is that the most prominent feature of the observatory is that, of the several telescopes housed, it is most well-known for the 200-inch Hale Telescope - named after the astronomer George Ellery Hale. Hale was known for being responsible for 4 of the biggest telescopes in the world. It's true that the larger telescopes allow for greater resolving power...but I like to think that Hale just wanted to have a really really big telescope to make all the other astronomers feel bad. Seriously...this thing is huge...

But besides that, the scale of the Hale telescope has allowed for major breakthroughs in astronomy - most notably the observations of extremely distant objects known as quasars, and the confirmation of stars in distant galaxies. The telescope has allowed the observation and study of the properties of intergalactic clouds, leading to better understanding of the fundamental processes of the universe. For quite some time, the Hale telescope housed at Palomar was the largest telescope in the world, before the building of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. Since anyone reading this is most likely a student at UCR, just a quick thought to close things... it might be kind of cool to make a trip to the observatory and see how things work. I hear the view of the stars at night is great from up there too.

One more random thing... thanks to Wikipedia, I just found out that Palomar is an old Spanish term meaning "pigeon house", in reference to either the large number of pigeons, or the old pigeon coups that used to exist there. And now you know.