The Journey To Palomar

[tballou]

This was a very interesting and informative special on an important era in science and astronomy. I would be interested in any comments from astronomers who have worked at Palomar or any of the other observatories covered in this show, or who had any personal interaction with Hubble.

[apodman]

I know from friends who worked at the Hubble STScI from its early days that, to get a starting reference of the sky for the Hubble to use, they scanned and digitized the best set of photos available: the Palomar full sky survey (taken I'm not sure whether by the 100" Schmitt or the 200" Cassegrain). Print, scan, and that's the end of the line for the photos - except (before I re-gifted it) for a while I had galaxy NGC-something-or-other (not well known at all) from the cutting room floor on high quality thick glossy paper maybe 20" x 24" hanging on my wall. For the data extracted from the scanned photos, STScI wrote their own software to catalog star (and other object) positions automatically; thank goodness for that, since the Palomar photos show stars of I-don't-know-what magnitude, too many for me to deal with by eye.

I didn't see the documentary you were referring to. When and on what channel/medium did it air?

Of course, I wonder why I never questioned the phrase "full-sky survey", since you obviously can't see far Southern declinations from California. I just googled the subject, and upon first glance it appears that I am the one who added the word "full" - sorry about that. Anyway, I think the survey has "full" coverage of all the sky it can see.

[bystander]

I didn't see the documentary you were referring to. When and on what channel/medium did it air?

The Journey to Palomar | PBS