dull dave wrote:For the moon to appear so large and the observatory to be so small, how far away from the observatory did the photographer have to be?
Google maps (satellite) would indicate that this picture is taken from due west of the original James Lick Telescope building which has north-south dimensions of ~ 75 meters.
The moon subtends and angle of about 0.01 radians (at Perigee)
and appears here ~4 times wider than the (north-south) building.
30,000 = 4 x 75 / 0.01
So one must be about 30 kilometers away in San Jose
(; and close to where my son Dr. Stephen Neuendorffer lives).
----------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lick ... _Telescope
<<The James Lick Telescope is an antique refracting 36 inch (91.44 cm) telescope built in 1889 that can still be viewed through today. Also called the "Great Lick Refractor" or simply "Lick Refractor", it is the third-largest refracting telescope in the world, surpassed by the Yerkes Observatory 40-inch and the 1 meter Swedish Solar Telescope. It is located at the University of California's Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton at an altitude of 4,209 feet (1,283 m) above sea-level. The telescope is housed inside a dome which is powered by hydraulics to raise and lower the floor, rotate the dome, and drive the clock mechanism to track the earth's rotation. The original hydraulic system still operates today, with the exception that the original wind-powered pumps to fill the reservoirs have been replaced with electric pumps. James Lick is himself entombed below the telescope's observing room's floor.>>
..............................................
[Another Hubble Telescope fiasco:
]
<<The telescope was the largest refractor until the 1897 construction of the Yerkes telescope, and the second largest up until 2002. The fabrication of the objective lens, a two element achromat, the largest lens ever made at the time, caused years of delay. The famous large telescope maker Alvan Clark was in charge of the optical design. He gave the contract for casting the high quality optical glass blanks, of a size never before attempted, to the firm of Charles Feil in Paris. One of the huge glass disks broke during shipping, and making a replacement was delayed. Finally, after 18 failed attempts, the lens was finished, transported safely across country, and on 1888-12-31 was carefully installed in the telescope tube. The builders had to wait for 3 days for a break in the clouds to test it. On the evening of January 3 the telescope saw 'first light' - and they found that the instrument couldn't be focused. An error in the estimate of the lens' focal length caused the tube to be built too long. A hacksaw was sent for, the great tube was unceremoniously cut back to the proper length, and the star Aldebaran came into focus.>>
----------------------------------------
<<These are some of the discoveries made with the Lick telescope:
1. Amalthea, the fifth satellite of Jupiter was discovered in September, 1892. It revolves around the planet once in 11h 57m 22.6s, and is probably about 100 miles in diameter. It is so difficult of observation that, besides members of the Lick Observatory staff, probably not more than twenty persons have seen it.
2. The speed of the planetary nebulae in their motions through space is of the same order of magnitude as the speed of the stars.
3. Twenty-five comets - 17 unexpected and 8 periodic - have been discovered.
4. The unequaled Lick series of comet photographs has taught us more as to the structure, formation, and dissolution of comets' tails than had been learned in all previous time.
5. About 1300 new double stars have been discovered.
6. The period of revolution of the double star delta Equulei has been shown to be 53/4 years, the shortest period previously known for any double star being 11.4 years. It is therefore in many ways the most interesting double star under observation.
7. Spectroscopic observations have shown that the atmosphere of Mars is of low density - probably much less dense at the surface of Mars than the Earth's atmosphere at the summit of the highest peak in the Himalayas.
8. The speed of the Solar System in its motion through space has been determined by means of the spectroscope to be 121/2 miles per second.
9. The average speed of the brighter stars is 21 miles per second.
10. The North Polar Star was found to be a triple star, in 1899, by means of spectroscopic observations. Two of its members are invisible in our largest telescopes. The bright star and one dark companion revolve around each other in four days; and these in turn revolve around the other dark body in several years.
11. Capella was discovered, in 1899, to be a spectroscopic binary star, period 104 days, the two nearly equal components being inseparable in our largest telescopes.
12. About 40 spectroscopic binaries - that is, stars seen single in ordinary telescopes, but proven to be double by means of the spectroscope - were discovered in 1898-1902. At least one star in seven has an invisible component, observable thus far only by spectroscopic means.
13. The Observatory possesses an unequaled series of photographs of the principal nebulae and star clusters.
14. About 10,000 nebulae have been discovered in the past at the various observatories; but the Lick photographs show that fully 100,000 nebulae await discovery. These photographs led to the unexpected discovery that the majority of the nebulae have a spiral form - undoubted evidence of their rotation.
15. The Observatory has an extensive set of large-scale photographs of the Solar Corona, secured at four total eclipses. They recorded for the first time the wonderful structure of the inner corona, and furnished invaluable evidence bearing upon the question of the origin of the coronal streamers.
16. Expeditions from the Lick Observatory successfully observed the following total Solar Eclipses: 1889, in Northern California; 1889, in French Guiana; 1893, in Chili; 1898, in India; 1900, in Georgia; and 1901, in Sumatra.
17. The light of the inner portion of the Solar Corona is largely inherent, whereas the light of the outer portion is largely reflected sunlight, as proven at the Sumatra eclipse by means of spectroscopic and polariscopic observations.
18. It has been shown that the principal "New Stars" have been converted into nebulae.
19. The extraordinary motion in the nebula surrounding Nova Persei was discovered from the photograph of November 7–8, 1901.
20. Many thousands of very accurate positions of stars have been secured with the Meridian Circle.
21. Very extensive and accurate observations of Double Stars, Comets, Planets, etc., have been made.
22. Very extensive additions have been made to our knowledge of the spectra of Nebulae, of Comets, of New Stars, of Bright-Line Stars, etc.
23. The speeds in the line of sight of about four hundred of the brighter stars in the northern sky have been measured by means of the spectroscope. The results for the various stars lie between the limits of sixty miles approach and sixty miles recession per second. A well-equipped expedition, provided for by Mr. D. O. Mills, will be sent from the Lick Observatory in the summer of 1902 to the vicinity of Santiago, Chili, for the purpose of determining the speeds of the brighter stars in the southern hemisphere of the sky.>>
---------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lick
<<James Lick was born in Stumpstown (now Fredericksburg) Pennsylvania on August 25, 1796. The son of a carpenter, Lick began learning the craft at an early age. When he was twenty one, after a failed romance with Barbara Snavely, Lick left Stumpstown for Baltimore, Maryland, where he learned the art of piano making. He quickly mastered the skill, and moved to New York and set up his own shop. In 1821 Lick moved to Argentina, after learning that his pianos were being exported to South America.
.
Lick found his time in Buenos Aires to be difficult, due to his ignorance of Spanish and the turbulent political situation in the country. However, his business thrived and in 1825 Lick left Argentina to tour Europe for a year. On his return trip, his ship was captured by the Portuguese, and the passengers and crew were taken to Montevideo as prisoners of war. Lick escaped captivity and returned to Buenos Aires on foot.
.
In 1832, Lick decided to return to Stumpstown. He failed to reunite with Barbara Snavely and their son and returned to Buenos Aires. He decided the political situation was too unstable and moved to Valparaíso, Chile. After four years, he again moved his business, this time to Lima, Peru.
.
In 1846, Lick decided to return to North America and, anticipating the Mexican-American War and the future annexation of California, he decided to settle there. However, a backlog of orders for his pianos delayed him an additional 18 months, as the Mexican workers he employed left to return to their homes and join the Mexican Army following the outbreak of war in April of that year; he finished the orders himself.
.
Lick arrived in San Francisco, California, in January 1848, bringing with him his tools, work bench, $30,000 in gold, and 600 pounds (300 kg) of chocolate. The chocolate quickly sold, and Lick convinced his neighbor in Peru, the confectioner Domingo Ghirardelli, to move to San Francisco, where he founded the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.
.
Upon his arrival, Lick began buying real estate in the small village of San Francisco. The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento a few days after Lick's arrival in the future state began the California Gold Rush and created a housing boom in San Francisco, which grew from about one thousand residents in 1848 to over twenty thousand by 1850. Lick himself got a touch of "gold fever" and went out to mine the metal, but after a week he decided his fortune was to be made by owning land, not digging in it. Lick continued buying land in San Francisco, and also began buying farmland in and around San Jose, where he planted orchards and built the largest flour mill in the state to feed the growing population in San Francisco.
.
In 1861, Lick began construction of a hotel, which became known as Lick House, at the intersection of Montgomery and Sutter Streets in San Francisco. The hotel had a dining room that could seat 400, based on a similar room at the palace of Versailles. Lick House was considered the finest hotel west of the Mississippi River. The hotel was destroyed in the fire following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
.
Following the construction, Lick returned to his San Jose orchards. In 1874, Lick suffered a massive stroke in the kitchen of his home in Santa Clara. The following morning, he was found by his employee, Thomas Fraser, and taken to Lick House, where he could be better cared for. At the time of his illness, his estates, outside his considerable area in Santa Clara County and San Francisco, included large holdings around Lake Tahoe, a large ranch in Los Angeles County, and all of Santa Catalina Island. James Lick was the richest man in California.
.
In the next three years, Lick spent his time determining how to dispense with his fortune. He originally wanted to build giant statues of himself and his parents, and erect a pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in his own honor in Downtown San Francisco. However, through the efforts of George Davidson, President of the California Academy of Sciences, Lick was persuaded to leave the greatest portion of his fortune to the establishment of a mountain top observatory, with the largest, most powerful telescope yet built by man. Lick had had an interest in astronomy since at least 1860, when he and George Madeira, the founder of the first observatory in California, spent several nights observing. They had also met again in 1873 and Lick said that Madeira's telescopes were the only ones he had ever used. In 1875, Thomas Fraser recommended a site at the summit of Mount Hamilton, near San Jose. Lick approved, on the condition that Santa Clara County build a "first class" road to the site. The county agreed and the hand built road was completed by the fall of 1876.
.
On October 1, 1876, Lick died in his room in Lick House, San Francisco. In 1887, his body was moved to its final resting place, under the future home of the Great Lick Refracting Telescope.>>
----------------------------
[quote="dull dave"]For the moon to appear so large and the observatory to be so small, how far away from the observatory did the photographer have to be? :?: [/quote]
Google maps (satellite) would indicate that this picture is taken from due west of the original James Lick Telescope building which has north-south dimensions of ~ 75 meters.
The moon subtends and angle of about 0.01 radians (at Perigee)
and appears here ~4 times wider than the (north-south) building.
30,000 = 4 x 75 / 0.01
So one must be about 30 kilometers away in San Jose
(; and close to where my son Dr. Stephen Neuendorffer lives).
----------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lick_Refracting_Telescope
<<The James Lick Telescope is an antique refracting 36 inch (91.44 cm) telescope built in 1889 that can still be viewed through today. Also called the "Great Lick Refractor" or simply "Lick Refractor", it is the third-largest refracting telescope in the world, surpassed by the Yerkes Observatory 40-inch and the 1 meter Swedish Solar Telescope. It is located at the University of California's Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton at an altitude of 4,209 feet (1,283 m) above sea-level. The telescope is housed inside a dome which is powered by hydraulics to raise and lower the floor, rotate the dome, and drive the clock mechanism to track the earth's rotation. The original hydraulic system still operates today, with the exception that the original wind-powered pumps to fill the reservoirs have been replaced with electric pumps. James Lick is himself entombed below the telescope's observing room's floor.>>
..............................................
[Another Hubble Telescope fiasco: :roll: ]
<<The telescope was the largest refractor until the 1897 construction of the Yerkes telescope, and the second largest up until 2002. The fabrication of the objective lens, a two element achromat, the largest lens ever made at the time, caused years of delay. The famous large telescope maker Alvan Clark was in charge of the optical design. He gave the contract for casting the high quality optical glass blanks, of a size never before attempted, to the firm of Charles Feil in Paris. One of the huge glass disks broke during shipping, and making a replacement was delayed. Finally, after 18 failed attempts, the lens was finished, transported safely across country, and on 1888-12-31 was carefully installed in the telescope tube. The builders had to wait for 3 days for a break in the clouds to test it. On the evening of January 3 the telescope saw 'first light' - and they found that the instrument couldn't be focused. An error in the estimate of the lens' focal length caused the tube to be built too long. A hacksaw was sent for, the great tube was unceremoniously cut back to the proper length, and the star Aldebaran came into focus.>>
----------------------------------------
<<These are some of the discoveries made with the Lick telescope:
1. Amalthea, the fifth satellite of Jupiter was discovered in September, 1892. It revolves around the planet once in 11h 57m 22.6s, and is probably about 100 miles in diameter. It is so difficult of observation that, besides members of the Lick Observatory staff, probably not more than twenty persons have seen it.
2. The speed of the planetary nebulae in their motions through space is of the same order of magnitude as the speed of the stars.
3. Twenty-five comets - 17 unexpected and 8 periodic - have been discovered.
4. The unequaled Lick series of comet photographs has taught us more as to the structure, formation, and dissolution of comets' tails than had been learned in all previous time.
5. About 1300 new double stars have been discovered.
6. The period of revolution of the double star delta Equulei has been shown to be 53/4 years, the shortest period previously known for any double star being 11.4 years. It is therefore in many ways the most interesting double star under observation.
7. Spectroscopic observations have shown that the atmosphere of Mars is of low density - probably much less dense at the surface of Mars than the Earth's atmosphere at the summit of the highest peak in the Himalayas.
8. The speed of the Solar System in its motion through space has been determined by means of the spectroscope to be 121/2 miles per second.
9. The average speed of the brighter stars is 21 miles per second.
10. The North Polar Star was found to be a triple star, in 1899, by means of spectroscopic observations. Two of its members are invisible in our largest telescopes. The bright star and one dark companion revolve around each other in four days; and these in turn revolve around the other dark body in several years.
11. Capella was discovered, in 1899, to be a spectroscopic binary star, period 104 days, the two nearly equal components being inseparable in our largest telescopes.
12. About 40 spectroscopic binaries - that is, stars seen single in ordinary telescopes, but proven to be double by means of the spectroscope - were discovered in 1898-1902. At least one star in seven has an invisible component, observable thus far only by spectroscopic means.
13. The Observatory possesses an unequaled series of photographs of the principal nebulae and star clusters.
14. About 10,000 nebulae have been discovered in the past at the various observatories; but the Lick photographs show that fully 100,000 nebulae await discovery. These photographs led to the unexpected discovery that the majority of the nebulae have a spiral form - undoubted evidence of their rotation.
15. The Observatory has an extensive set of large-scale photographs of the Solar Corona, secured at four total eclipses. They recorded for the first time the wonderful structure of the inner corona, and furnished invaluable evidence bearing upon the question of the origin of the coronal streamers.
16. Expeditions from the Lick Observatory successfully observed the following total Solar Eclipses: 1889, in Northern California; 1889, in French Guiana; 1893, in Chili; 1898, in India; 1900, in Georgia; and 1901, in Sumatra.
17. The light of the inner portion of the Solar Corona is largely inherent, whereas the light of the outer portion is largely reflected sunlight, as proven at the Sumatra eclipse by means of spectroscopic and polariscopic observations.
18. It has been shown that the principal "New Stars" have been converted into nebulae.
19. The extraordinary motion in the nebula surrounding Nova Persei was discovered from the photograph of November 7–8, 1901.
20. Many thousands of very accurate positions of stars have been secured with the Meridian Circle.
21. Very extensive and accurate observations of Double Stars, Comets, Planets, etc., have been made.
22. Very extensive additions have been made to our knowledge of the spectra of Nebulae, of Comets, of New Stars, of Bright-Line Stars, etc.
23. The speeds in the line of sight of about four hundred of the brighter stars in the northern sky have been measured by means of the spectroscope. The results for the various stars lie between the limits of sixty miles approach and sixty miles recession per second. A well-equipped expedition, provided for by Mr. D. O. Mills, will be sent from the Lick Observatory in the summer of 1902 to the vicinity of Santiago, Chili, for the purpose of determining the speeds of the brighter stars in the southern hemisphere of the sky.>>
---------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lick
<<James Lick was born in Stumpstown (now Fredericksburg) Pennsylvania on August 25, 1796. The son of a carpenter, Lick began learning the craft at an early age. When he was twenty one, after a failed romance with Barbara Snavely, Lick left Stumpstown for Baltimore, Maryland, where he learned the art of piano making. He quickly mastered the skill, and moved to New York and set up his own shop. In 1821 Lick moved to Argentina, after learning that his pianos were being exported to South America.
.
Lick found his time in Buenos Aires to be difficult, due to his ignorance of Spanish and the turbulent political situation in the country. However, his business thrived and in 1825 Lick left Argentina to tour Europe for a year. On his return trip, his ship was captured by the Portuguese, and the passengers and crew were taken to Montevideo as prisoners of war. Lick escaped captivity and returned to Buenos Aires on foot.
.
In 1832, Lick decided to return to Stumpstown. He failed to reunite with Barbara Snavely and their son and returned to Buenos Aires. He decided the political situation was too unstable and moved to Valparaíso, Chile. After four years, he again moved his business, this time to Lima, Peru.
.
In 1846, Lick decided to return to North America and, anticipating the Mexican-American War and the future annexation of California, he decided to settle there. However, a backlog of orders for his pianos delayed him an additional 18 months, as the Mexican workers he employed left to return to their homes and join the Mexican Army following the outbreak of war in April of that year; he finished the orders himself.
.
Lick arrived in San Francisco, California, in January 1848, bringing with him his tools, work bench, $30,000 in gold, and 600 pounds (300 kg) of chocolate. The chocolate quickly sold, and Lick convinced his neighbor in Peru, the confectioner Domingo Ghirardelli, to move to San Francisco, where he founded the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.
.
Upon his arrival, Lick began buying real estate in the small village of San Francisco. The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento a few days after Lick's arrival in the future state began the California Gold Rush and created a housing boom in San Francisco, which grew from about one thousand residents in 1848 to over twenty thousand by 1850. Lick himself got a touch of "gold fever" and went out to mine the metal, but after a week he decided his fortune was to be made by owning land, not digging in it. Lick continued buying land in San Francisco, and also began buying farmland in and around San Jose, where he planted orchards and built the largest flour mill in the state to feed the growing population in San Francisco.
.
In 1861, Lick began construction of a hotel, which became known as Lick House, at the intersection of Montgomery and Sutter Streets in San Francisco. The hotel had a dining room that could seat 400, based on a similar room at the palace of Versailles. Lick House was considered the finest hotel west of the Mississippi River. The hotel was destroyed in the fire following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
.
Following the construction, Lick returned to his San Jose orchards. In 1874, Lick suffered a massive stroke in the kitchen of his home in Santa Clara. The following morning, he was found by his employee, Thomas Fraser, and taken to Lick House, where he could be better cared for. At the time of his illness, his estates, outside his considerable area in Santa Clara County and San Francisco, included large holdings around Lake Tahoe, a large ranch in Los Angeles County, and all of Santa Catalina Island. James Lick was the richest man in California.
.
In the next three years, Lick spent his time determining how to dispense with his fortune. He originally wanted to build giant statues of himself and his parents, and erect a pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in his own honor in Downtown San Francisco. However, through the efforts of George Davidson, President of the California Academy of Sciences, Lick was persuaded to leave the greatest portion of his fortune to the establishment of a mountain top observatory, with the largest, most powerful telescope yet built by man. Lick had had an interest in astronomy since at least 1860, when he and George Madeira, the founder of the first observatory in California, spent several nights observing. They had also met again in 1873 and Lick said that Madeira's telescopes were the only ones he had ever used. In 1875, Thomas Fraser recommended a site at the summit of Mount Hamilton, near San Jose. Lick approved, on the condition that Santa Clara County build a "first class" road to the site. The county agreed and the hand built road was completed by the fall of 1876.
.
On October 1, 1876, Lick died in his room in Lick House, San Francisco. In 1887, his body was moved to its final resting place, under the future home of the Great Lick Refracting Telescope.>>
----------------------------