One way to keep track of the weather is to find webcams near the area in which you’re interested. Today, after the storm passed through, I took a look at the webcam on the Mount Wilson Solar Observation Tower. I saw this snowy fairyland and the observatory dome housing the famous Hooker 100 inch Newtonian Telescope at the left.
Here’s some history on the Hooker Telescope from the Mount Wilson Observatory:
The Hooker 100-inch telescope is named after John D. Hooker, who provided the funds for the giant mirror. It was the largest telescope in the world from 1917 to 1948 when the 200-inch telescope was built on Palomar Mountain 90 miles to the southeast. Many great discoveries were made with the 100-inch telescope Edwin Hubble’s refinement of the distance scale of the universe. The first optical interferometer ever used for astronomical research was used on the 100-inch telescope to measure the sizes of distant stars for the first time in 1919.
The 100-inch telescope has three optical configurations available to meet the requirements of a wide variety research projects. A very high-resolution spectrograph is located at the telescope’s Coudé focus. Located on the ground floor of the 100-inch telescope dome, the Aluminizing Room is used to recoat all of the telescope mirrors at the observatory.
