Re: [ATM] Banishing the diagonal

[Guy Brandenburg <gfbrandenburg@yahoo.com>]

According to "First Light" which concerns some
experiments at Palomar, there is an exclusive club of
a small number of people who have performed certain
experiments (shall we say, practicing procreation) in
the prime focus cage of the 200-inch telescope. Not
possible in the days when women were not allowed up
there at night, however. That must have thrown off a
lot of excess heat, and really messed up the balance
and the seeing because of excess vibrations...

But then again, I asked at least one of the telescope
operators at Mt Wilson about the story, 2 weekends
ago, and she hadn't heard about the rumors.

And, once again, even though it is **really**
thrilling to catch photons with your bare retinas,
especially photons that left galaxies and such many
millions of years ago, real scientific progress is
done with instruments such as spectrometers and CCD
cameras performing photometry... And one of John
Dobson's difficulties is that he doesn't really
understand much science at all.

Guy

--- GARY FUCHS <gary@rcn.com> wrote:

> Art,
> 
> If we're really serious about banishing the
> diagonal, I'm 
> thinking we're going to need much, much larger
> mirrors - so 
> we can sit in the spider...and good
> insulation/cooling.
> 
> And a hell of a lot of carbon fiber! 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Gary
> 
> 
> I agree completely. Lazy, half baked yuppies in
> metropolitan 
> apartments will buy such gimmiks but the
> dyed-in-the-wool 
> astronomer will follow John Dobson's lead when he
> said that 
> astronomy was meant for ". . . wet eyes"
> 
> Art Bianconi
> 
> George wrote:
> 
> ". . . the big thing going against the idea is that
> most 
> people 
> still want to see the real thing with their eyes."
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> 


=====
Guy  Brandenburg
Washington, DC
My home page:
http://home.earthlink.net/~gfbranden/GFB_Home_Page.html
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