An amateur astronomer's dream: 'to sit in the dugout'

By: MARK RITTER - For the North County Times | Saturday, December 11, 2004 10:31 PM PST ∞

Imagine yourself a fervent baseball fan and one day, out of nowhere, you are asked if you might like sitting in the dugout with your favorite team during a game. You now get an idea of how I felt when asked recently if I would like to spend the evening at Palomar Observatory. I think "giddy" might describe it.

Here's my story:

Months ago, Scott Kardel, Palomar's benevolent and bearded public affairs coordinator, asked me during a daytime tour if I would like to sit in one night at the world-renowned, 200-inch Hale telescope. Once I regain consciousness and manage to sit up, witnesses tell me I mouthed the word "please."

A couple weeks ago, my big day finally arrives. I pack up my notebook and camera, and head for the acclaimed Palomar Mountain.

It's late afternoon, and driving along Highway 76, now dotted by casinos, I make the turn up from the valley of the shadow of debt to the S-6, the windy road that leads to the revered mountaintop.

Alas, above me is a ceiling of clouds! But I fear that those clouds will ruin my big chance to "sit in the dugout" clear as I reach the snow-outlined summit of Palomar. It is there, above those clouds, where the great telescope stands proudly above its tree-lined surroundings.

Greetings

Kardel meets me at the famed dome, and as the sun westers toward the horizon, he drives me to The Monastery, an old but well-kept building that is home for the visiting astronomers. Deer ---- big deer ---- are casually feeding just yards away from the edifice.

Once inside, Kardel insists on showing me a book in the small library. Not just any book, mind you, but an old physics book owned and signed in 1914 by George Ellery Hale ---- the George Ellery Hale. Baseball fans, that would be like getting to hold in your hand a baseball card signed by Babe Ruth himself.

It was Hale who, a century ago, was the Bambino of astronomy. Among a hundred other projects, he built both the celebrated Yerkes Observatory near Chicago, and one of the most productive observatories ever ---- Mount Wilson near Los Angeles.

And, of course, he was the genius behind the creation of Palomar Observatory, which for decades after it was finished in 1948 was the premiere telescope on the planet.

Now, joining us in the dimly lit library, is a man with jet-black, Einstein-like disheveled hair, the astronomer who would be observing that night. He is the soft-spoken and unassuming Daniel Stern from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Stern, Kardel and I sit down for the traditional dinner before observing and have a light, but fascinating conversation about life as an astronomer and some of the politics behind the venerable institution. That is, until Stern suddenly realizes that it is sunset, and in the twinkling of an eye, he vanishes.

Astronomers waste none of the precious darkness given them.

Getting ready

Actually, "given them" is not the best phrase here. Observing at the big scopes is no free lunch. The cost of observing for one night at Palomar will put an institution back $10,000. Want to observe for one night at the 10-meter Keck telescope on Hawaii's Big Island? Prepare to say aloha to about 40,000 clams!

That is why the astronomers and the many people who work at Palomar spend the daytime hours getting more than well-prepared for the night.

Setting up equipment, programming the computers, and making sure everything is primed and ready takes a full-time and expert staff.

But all the preparation in the world will not make the sky clear, or stop the rain or winds or snow. And those pesky elements will be the problem tonight.

Stern's objective at Palomar is to follow up on some strange radio sources in deep space picked up by a very large array of radio telescopes in the New Mexican desert called, no kidding, the Very Large Array.

Using an infrared camera attached to the Hale telescope, he hopes to identify these objects, possible candidates for distant infant galaxies, billions of light-years away, galaxies that will help us understand the earliest eras in the life of the universe.

Queen of the Hill

This is Stern's last night of a three-day run. But already, the first two nights were shot with the recent snow and cloud cover.

Tonight is his last chance. Someone else is moving in tomorrow, come rain or starshine. This is how real astronomy works.

Bad news, though, so far. The snow from the dome is still melting and dripping like rain off the sides. Will tonight be his third strike? He is hoping the temperature will drop below freezing and still those running waters.

That call ---- to open or close the sacred dome on the rock ---- belongs to the effervescent and hyper-friendly Jean Mueller, the operations Queen of the Hill.

Mueller has been at Palomar since the 1980s. And she is no slouch. She has worked on special projects here in which she alone has discovered 15 comets, 10 asteroids, and (sit down) more than 100 supernovae.

Look up "Comet Mueller" on Google.com, and watch the pages and pages of hits jump to the screen. I am in the presence of an icon, but an unpretentious, good-humored icon.

'I wanna do'

By now, a couple hours of prime darkness have passed. Mueller and Stern go outside in the near-freezing cold to inspect the dome, eyeing any possible source of water or ice that might fall fatefully onto the 14.5-ton mirror.

Good news! Mueller enters the control room and decrees that the water is no longer a threat. All is well, and Stern grins like my son does when he has been given another hour on Nintendo.

"Hey, Mark," Mueller says, "do you wanna just observe, or do you wanna do?" (Emphasis on the "do.")

"Ma'am," I reply, "I wanna do."

"Then follow me," she says, and leads me from the control room into the vast and very dark dome. She walks in this blackness as if she is wearing night vision goggles. I follow behind, fearing for my safety as I blindly walk up metal stairs, then along the inner edge of the dome.

Mueller takes out a tiny flashlight and barely illuminates a little red button on the dome wall that reads OPEN. "Push that and count to one," she tells me. I do, without question, although the counting to one part remains a mystery to this day.

A moment later, there is a whirring of motors, and looking above me, I see the monstrous, classic winged shutters of the dome, 125 tons a piece, begin to open wide. Brilliant stars appear through the gaping slit, and the observatory fills with a ghostly glow from a near full moon outside.

And in front of me, bigger than big, the great Hale telescope is revealed, eerily outlined in that moonlight, as it should be. And I feel my jaw dropping to the cold concrete floor.

A well-traveled astronomer

As I stand there and marvel at this truly surrealistic sight, simultaneously relocating my jaw, Mueller and Stern are already back inside setting coordinates, and within moments, the great telescope is slewing across and down to put its sights on the first objects of the night. There is no time wasted here.

Stern has to shove three nights of observing into less than one. So, as he gathers data from one source, he plows through his notebook looking for those objects now that will be in the best parts of the sky and require the least amount of exposure time.

But as busy as he is, Stern ---- Stern is German for "star" ---- still takes time out to talk. He is 34, a UC Berkeley graduate, and is on staff now at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He travels all around the world, all year long, attending seminars and observing at the big scopes. Already this year, he has logged about 35 nights of observing, including runs at Keck, a heavy load by anybody's standards.

"I have a hard time saying no," he says, accounting for his superhuman schedule. He calls out coordinates to Mueller for the next object. She obliges by entering those numbers, and then moves the behemoth to its new position. And I let him get back to his work.

After several hours of soaking it all ---- the diverse conversations, the camaraderie of the group, the fluid teamwork, the silly humor, and the proud displaying of Palomar pictures in December's National Geographic ---- Kardel asks if I want to go to the catwalk and have a final look out at the surroundings. Like I would say no.

The big picture

We head out of the warm comfort of the room and into the cold darkness of the dome. Upstairs we go; I'm feeling my way around again like a blind man. We finally reach the door that leads through to the catwalk and take a step out into the sub-40-degree air.

I remember years ago hearing an astronomer talk about the catwalk. He said in essence that each of the big scopes has one, so that an astronomer can occasionally step away from the work, go outside, look up and see the big picture. One can then be overwhelmingly reminded of why he or she chose to be an astronomer in the first place.

And what a sight here on Palomar Mountain! Above us, the brightest stars shine like perfect jewels. The bright moon has faintly lit the snowy, tree-studded landscape around us. It takes the breath away.

Kardel points out the other domes on the mountain, all busy working away at some project or another.

Immediately below, a person operating Palomar's Testbed Interferometer near the dome walks heavily through the snow, unaware of us, flashlight in hand, every one of his footsteps crunching loudly in the absolute quiet of the night. He appears to check some unseen instrument, then suddenly shouts out a resounding and ecstatic "ya-HOO!" into the night air. His work is going well, apparently.

Into the light

Then we gaze down into the valley, north toward Temecula, the layer of clouds there lit bright white by its casino and auto mall.

"The light pollution is bad and getting worse," Kardel says. But the glowing haze comes also from distant San Diego to the south, Oceanside to the west, and even a ways over to the northeast from Palm Springs.

This form of pollution doesn't just adversely affect the telescopes' abilities to do their jobs, but also the way people see the sky.

Tragically, there are people from all these areas, just below one of the premiere telescopes in the world, who have never seen the Milky Way and the star-studded covering on the vast sky dome above because of the hideous man-made glow.

We make our way back to the control room.

It is time to leave now. I take some pictures of all of them ---- these people who made me feel as if I had known them for years ---- and head out into the cold.

Driving down back into the cities of blinding lights, I am tremendously thankful. Thankful that I got a chance to sit in the dugout, even for just one night, with some of the heavy hitters of this fascinating life sport of astronomy.

Mark Ritter teaches astronomy at Temecula Valley High School and can be reached at mritter@firstlightastro.com.