Seeing the Universe

before 1610 - naked eye astronomy

1608 - Galileo's hand held telescopes

1673 - Hevelius' long telescopes

1780 - Herschel's large reflectors

1838 - Meridian Circles

1845 - Rosse's Leviathian

1890 - Barnard's camera

1923 - The Hooker 100 inch

1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope

1998 - The Keck 10 metre pair

2000 - The VLT array

2015 - Planning for the JWST

2020? - Planning the OWL

How much further?

Since its construction in 1948, the Hale 200 inch telescope on Mount Palomar has been used on almost every clear night to study all aspects of the universe: the asteroids and comets within the solar system, the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy, the uncounted galaxies beyond our own, and those brilliant, distant beacons, the quasars, whose light takes billions of years to reach us. This powerful light gathering instrument has enabled astronomers to extend our understanding of the universe and to attempt to answer such questions as: How did the Sun and planets form? How do stars form, evolve, and die? How old is the Milky Way? How old is the universe? How did it form, and what is its fate?

Throughout its first 50 years, the Hale 200 inch telescope has been constantly improved. Sensitive position sensors and high-speed computers have been fitted. New electronic devices, up to 100 times more sensitive than the photographic plates used when the telescope began operations have since been developed. Other devices measure infrared light, a part of the spectrum that was inaccessible to astronomers in 1948. Because of these improvements, the 200-inch Hale Telescope remains a cutting edge instrument for attacking research problems that could not have been attempted just a few years ago.  Mount Palomar Observatory