Mount Wilson Observatory - an update
hi, an update of my previous post.
Despite the back fire set up by the firefighters last night, the station fire continued explanding and it is now less than 1/2 mile away from the observatory. 
Here a copy of the last post on Hal McAlister, the Director of the MWO, blog posted a few minutes ago.
“Monday, 31 Aug 09, 2:46 pm PDT - CHARA Array operator PJ Goldfinger reported that at about 2:00 pm she monitored an LA County Sheriffs Department transmission advising a pullout from Red Box, the major staging area near the mountain. I just spoke with Sherry Roman, Public Affairs Officer of the Angeles National Forest. She could give no updates as to the status of the fire in the Mount Wilson vicinity except that the USFS still considers that passage of fire across Mount Wilson is imminent and will be fought aerially rather than with ground personnel. Once the fire is through the area, they can assess the damage by air after the event before they can send in ground personnel. She also confirmed what PJ’s monitoring implied, that firefighters have been removed from Red Box.
This roller coaster has taken a dip downward. “
The firefighters were instructed to withdraw this morning around 8:00am. The webcam is still working at the time I am writing these words and the power is still on. No flames are visible so there is still hope.
a snap-shot of tower webcam from UCLA taken at ~3 pm
The Mount Wilson Observatory is known for the Hale telescope, a 5-m telescope, but also for the The Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA), one of the best interferometer which provides data in near-infrared with the most exquisite angular resolution. You may have seen pictures of Altair, one of the brightest stars in the sky, published 2 years ago and collected with this instrument. CHARA is composed of 6 telescopes of 1m diameter, separated by 250 m. It therefore provides a angular resolution equivalent as a virtual 250m aperture telescope. Thanks to interferometry technique, which combined the light from several telescopes, the stars are not anymore point-sources. This observatory hosts unique instruments and it will be a great lost if it would be burnt.
CHARA Resolution Analogy (Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation).
The blaze killed two firefighters, destroyed at least 21 homes, several people were injured and forced thousands of evacuations (from AP associated Press).
I really don’t like Mondays like this…
Franck M.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:03 am
Bonsoir Franck,
je suis un autre francais chercheur (biologie) de LA. J’ai visite le Mount Wilson avec ma famille il y a quelques semaines, et la situation de ce soir (lundi) fait vraiment de la peine a voir! J’espere que dans une semaine ou moins tu pourras dire: “on a eu chaud!!” et que le feu vous aura epargne. Le site du Mount Wilson est vraiment exceptionel a plus d’un titre: historique, scientifique, sa localisation et l’endroit lui meme et plus d’y avoir un francais qui y travail. Cela me ferait plaisir de prendre contact avec vous,
bon courage, tenez bon!
a bientot,
Sebastien
September 1st, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Pour info, je ne travaille pas directement au Mount Wilson. Je suis base au nord de la Californie et travaille essentiellement au Lick et au Keck. Le Mount Wilson Observatory m’interesse car c’est un site historique qui contient aussi des instruments de tres grandes qualites.