a real telescope eye

I'm an amateur astronomer who has never been able to afford a telescope. I have many other ironic failures to share, but let's stick to this one. Luckily, there's a boom in astronomy right now, with a mind-boggling array of surveys and catalogs and tools available online. In most other ways, the 21st century has been lame so far. According to the sci-fi classics, we oughta be much further along than we are, but the world continues to be 99% dull, and hardly anything seems to change. The internet itself is almost entirely drivel, but there are some astronomical gems if you know where to look.

And don't forget to look away from time to time ...

This weekend I was up at the 60" telescope on Palomar Mountain. An unexpected invitation and twisty road trip into darkness. Okay, if it was dark, the astronomers would have been too busy to see us, but the full moon was out, the deer were lurking, and there we went.

Comically, since the real astronomers never actually look through the scope with their eyes, when there's a tour they only have a really, really old eyepiece to slap on there. Looking through this telescope is like having a volkswagen suspended over your head, but looking through the tailpipe you can see millions of light years away. That, and zero emissions. And those precious moments where you feel you can touch the universe in some way. A vehicle of sorts after all.

Of course, there was a little control room full of computers. Every time they opened the door, this insane blue glow came pouring out. No wonder we can't find all that dark matter -- our eyes have become accustomed to the radiation.

A very interesting trip. Including the discovery that there is more than one road up on that mountain, and the other one doesn't go anywhere. A brief shift in reality, and then we were gone.

Thanks, Mike.