Left to right: Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Walther Mayer, Walter S. Adams, Arthur S. King, and William W. Campbell pose in front of the 100-inch telescope dome at Mount Wilson Observatory on 29 January 1931 (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I simply didn\u2019t appreciate what I was looking at.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
To me, when I was quite small, Mount Wilson represented an occasional opportunity to escape classes and go on a school field trip. \u00a0My parents took me there as well, and they also took me to visit the observatory at Mount Palomar when I was still a child. \u00a0It was only years later that I really began to comprehend the significance of these places for the history of science.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But my parents\u2019 efforts weren\u2019t entirely wasted. \u00a0I went through a period of several years in which, still as a fairly young boy, I dreamed of being an astronomer. \u00a0I don\u2019t know whether I would have pursued that path very far or not. \u00a0What killed it was poor eyesight. \u00a0I wondered for a while how people could claim to see constellations and planets with their naked eyes, whereas, to me, it was all a blur. \u00a0I thought that was normal. \u00a0I finally got eyeglasses when I was about ten years old or so, and it made a huge difference. \u00a0But I had already given up on trying to see things in the night sky. \u00a0And, anyway, the Los Angeles Basin, with its pollution-laden air and its bright lights, wasn\u2019t an ideal viewing location.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 A very short but fascinating discussion, using pivotal photographs, of some of the most important developments in the history of astronomy: \u00a0 http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/32\/space\/these-astronomical-glass-plates-made-history \u00a0 \u00a0 Growing up in San Gabriel, California, I saw Mount Wilson \u2014 a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains \u2014 virtually every day of my life until I went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[344,4919,7248,347,3820,7839,350,2532],"class_list":["post-81807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-astronomy","tag-dan","tag-daniel","tag-mount-palomar","tag-mount-wilson","tag-mt-wilson","tag-palomar","tag-peterson"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>