Just about an hour outside of Los Angeles at the top of a windy rode sits several telescopes that have not only an impressive 60 inch and 100 inch telescope, but an even more impressive history. The 60 inch telescope, was first built in 1904 by George Ellery Hale under the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Fifteen years later the 100 inch telescope was constructed and the Snow Solar Telescope from Yerke’s Observatory was brought to Mt. Wilson creating the first astronomical research facility. This facility was where the term “astrophysics” was created, with telescopes that could give information on spectra that allowed astronomers to focus on physical properties of stars instead of just brightness and motion.  The top of Mt. Wilson had also been determined to have some of the best “atmospheric seeing” or the optical quality of Earth’s atmosphere. Since Mt. Wilson is located near the Pacific Ocean, the turbulence of the air is decreased which creates better seeing. This is often why observatories are located near oceans like in Hawaii.

Mt. Wilson Observatory is where the universe was discovered. It was in the 100 inch Hooker telescope that Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. Other breakthroughs in science occurred here with the Big Bang Theory and dark energy. Harlow Shapley discovered that the sun was not the center of the universe, but just another star in our galaxy.  The campus was also visited by the famous Albert Einstein.

My experience at Mt. Wilson Observatory was unlike any other. I'll admit, I've always been obsessed with the night sky. As a child I attended a week long astro camp, and growing up I loved using the family telescope to look at the moon, but nothing could come close in comparison to my experience here. While the 60 inch and 100 inch telescopes have long been surpassed by bigger and more high-tech telescopes, I was blown away the massive size of it. The mechanics of the structure designed over a century ago and are still used today when the dome opens and rotates around. While I've seen the incredible pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope in books and online, the experience of looking through the telescope with my own eye and seeing objects light years away is indescribable. It's as if these objects that I will never get to visit are brought right in front of me, connecting earth to outer space. 

While we each took turns looking through the telescope individually at Mars, Jupiter, the galaxy M82, a ghost planet, and Saturn with its amazing rings, we were also encouraged to experiment with astrophotography through long exposure. Everyone set their cameras and tripods up throughout the Mt. Wilson campus, using the trees and buildings as foreground and leaving the shutter open to record the star trails as the earth rotates. While I did experiment with this briefly, I had trouble with my infinity focus and many of my pictures of the night sky came out blurry. I was able to capture the big dipper constellation with a five minute exposure, but found myself too impatient, and my camera also dying, to leave it out for longer than that. Personally, I was more drawn to the interior and architecture of the 60 inch telescope. I experimented with leaving the shutter open while the dome rotated and the telescope moved to a new object. Overall I spent most of the night relaxing and enjoying the stars with my naked eye and through the telescope, and am hoping to return to experiment with more astrophotography now that I have had more practice.

Sources: 

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/01/science/sci-observatory1

http://www.mtwilson.edu/his/art/g1a1.php