Southern California - Mostly

Wednesday, 15 May, through Saturday, 17 May, 2025

We always wanted to see the Mt. Palomar Observatory in person - even though (1) optical telescopes are nighttime creatures, (2) all the observing is done electronically, and (3) there's really not that much to see! But (1) optical observatories are usually in interesting mountaintop locations, and (2) it's still interesting to see these legendary scientific instruments up close.

First sight of the Palomar dome.

The classic entrance to the dome. Inside are another three floors of steps to climb to the observing floor.

The heart of the 200-inch Hale Telescope with primary mirror, camera, and associated electronics. In the background is the chamber used for resurfacing the mirror. Caltech maintains a web page giving all the details about the telescope.

After visiting Palomar, we continued on to Pasadena and Caltech. On Thursday, we had signed up for a tour of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech runs with NASA).

The Clean Room at JPL where all the unmanned NASA satellites and space probes are assembled. For scale, a fully-suited manikin is in the foreground.

"The Center of the Universe" - the main control room at JPL.

We finished Thursday with a campus tour of Caltech.

The newest building on the Caltech campus - the Resnick Sustainability Center.

The atrium of the Resnick Sustainability Center.

Peacocks are fairly common around Pasadena and Arcadia.

Not exactly California, but Arizona. Sunset along I-40 in eastern Arizona.