March 11

Today was a good day at the observatory. As promised some time ago, here are the pics to catch up on the work I've written about. First a pretty picture:This was taken looking west from near where the paved road gives way to the dirt road five miles from the observatory. The snow capped peak is Mt. San Jacinto. Just beyond and 7,000 feet below its peak lies Palm Springs at sea level. People normally see this mountain in the background of the Palm Springs postcards.

Most of the dirt road has been repaired since the last rains two weeks ago except for the final approach to our gate, which actually is considerably worse for some reason.

This rut is almost a foot deep and runs all he way to our gate, splitting along the way. The best way to cross this is to try and pass over it at a 90 degree angle - as long as the sides don't collapse!

Here's an axle buster!

Now for the catch-up pics. Here is the outside view with the new stains and weeping from the rain:

East wall:

South wall:

The walls will have to be power washed again prior to painting in a few weeks.

Here is the new door between the warm room and the observing area:

Its been keeping the rain out of the warm room.

Below is where we replaced the window between the warm room and observing area. This will be covered in a few weeks by the wall from John's warm room.Below is the west footing for the north rail support column, still in its form and not yet back filled:

Below is the warm room as of today. The old ceiling tiles have been removed. The new tiles are in cases on the left. The white squares piled in the back middle are the new lights that will replace the old fluorescent lights. There will still be both white and red lights on different on/off switches. The red lights are used at night to maintain your night vision.
Against the back wall are 4 X 4s of dry wall. I had to cut them down from 4 X 8s in the Lowe's parking lot to get them in my van. I provided some fine amusement for Lowe's customers that day. The new stud wall in the middle was built today. I made it into two separate sections as can be seen by the fact that the top sill are in two pieces. That was for two reasons: 1 - I was here alone today and would not have been able to lift and position a wall of that size myself; 2 - The top sill would have been 12 feet long - too long for my van. I did manage to position the two sections and bolt them to the cement slab floor. The empty center part of the wall is the roughed out area for the pocket door and its frame, both of which are leaning against the right hand wall beyond the new stud wall.

By next week John will have completed most of the new wiring and I will have completed the new wall. John will also start on his warm room in the current observing area. Within the next month my new camera will arrive and I will start the shake down on my new system. That will get me to the point of coming out for a long weekend where I can work on the observatory, take images and photometry at night, and do afternoon tours at Palomar Observatory, only forty minutes away.

Speaking of which, I was at Palomar last weekend and was snowed on for the first time in California. I got a chance to climb inside part of the telescope. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, here is a standard picture of the Hale telescope at Palomar:

Just a quick explanation. The steel truss work pointing to the one o'clock position is actually what you would call the telescope tube. The mirror is almost 16 1/2 feet in diameter. Now look at the solid tube pointing at the 10 o'clock position in the foreground. It is hollow and I was able to climb inside of it last week. Here is my picture just inside the round entry portal:

I think this is enough for today. Since we are starting a new season at Palomar and I'm involved there with researching the observatory history and working on a telescope program in addition to conducting tours, I can provide a lot of interesting behind the scenes stories. Please let me know if you would like me to write about Palomar in addition to my observatory.