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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
1948 - The Palomar 200 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

Dedication ceremony, 1948, under the 200-inch Hale telescope (Mt Palomar Observatory)