Word: palomares
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...nearly a half-century, starting in 1949, the world's most powerful research-quality telescope was the Hale, on Palomar Mountain, in California. Its mirror, 5 m (17 ft.) in diameter, focused more faint starlight than anything else on the planet. But in the past few years, the Hale has been humbled. Here on Mauna Kea alone sit the Subaru telescope (no relation to the car), with a mirror more than 8 m (27 ft.) across; the Gemini North telescope, also topping 8 m; and the kings of the mountain, the twin Keck telescopes, whose light-gathering surfaces...
Hubble's last great contribution to astronomy was a central role in the design and construction of the Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain. Four times as powerful as the Hooker, the Hale would be the largest telescope on Earth for four decades. It would have been even longer, but its completion was interrupted by World War II. So was Hubble's career. The ex-major signed on as head of ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. (At one point the eminent astronomer spent an afternoon test-firing bazookas, at great personal risk, to pinpoint a design flaw...
...about 150 pages, the book is almost a novella and thus is supplemented with a lovely preface by Calvino himself, written in 1964. Calvino's later and better-known novels were neither warm nor autobiographical (with the exception of his final novel, the distanced and pensive Mr. Palomar), so it is somewhat surprising to find Calvino reflective and downright chatty. Nests was originally published in 1947 when Calvino was twenty-three; writing in 1964, Calvino was twenty-three; writing in 1964, Calvinoapparently felt the 17 years in between had earnedhim the seniority which marks his attitude in thepreface, even though...
Room 307. There's an audible hum in Malcolm Thompson's classroom, known at Dalton as the ``AstroCave.'' Seven computers are in use, each surrounded by a clutch of students murmuring in continual discussion of their work. The place is littered with 13 1/2-in. square Palomar plates -- grayish films, sprinkled with dark points of light representing stars and nebulae that were recorded by the 48-in. telescope at California's Palomar Observatory. Each student has chosen three stars and has been asked to calculate their brightness and temperature based on what the pupils see on the plates and can glean...
Fred Brown Palomar, California...