When I used to work at Apple, I’d commute each day from the Monterey area, over Route 17 into the Santa Clara Valley. It was probably around then that I caught a glimpse of the white domes of the Lick Observatory on the other side of the valley.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense — an observatory above one of the most heavily urbanized places in the state? But it seems to be a trend in California — Palomar Observatory in the San Diego area, and Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
I dragged the kids up there years and years ago and thought it would be a perfect place to explore with Kasul.
If we could get there.
We’d rented an electric car, a Chevy Bolt EV. We’d fast charged it outside a Nob Hill in the San Jose area the day before just to make sure it had the range to make it to the top and back.
The range dropped from about 220 miles to 157 miles on the trip up. But, it was back up to 192 due to all the regenerative braking after we got back down to the floor of the valley. Go, EVs…
There are several world-class telescopes at the observatory, and no serious work is done with the old refractor anymore. But it was the only telescope they allowed us to see… and it is very impressive in person.
James Lick was a character. He was the richest man in California at the time. That old saying about the only people who made money in the California gold rush were the people selling the gear — that was Lick. He used his money to buy real estate all over California, including lots in San Francisco and many orchards in San Jose. He owned the entire island of Santa Catalina.
After a stroke, he decided to use all his money to do some public good. His first idea was to construct the largest pyramid in the world in the middle of San Francisco. That didn’t go over well. (The Transamerica Pyramid didn’t have anything to do with James Lick, btw). He was persuaded by a good friend to instead build the largest telescope in the world.
This was the Lick Observatory. And it is impressive.
The dome can rotate 360 degrees; so can the telescope, independently. The telescope can see as low as 5 degrees above the horizon all the way to straight up. Since the telescope doesn’t have computer imaging, astronomers have to peer inside the small tube at the bottom of it to see anything. If the telescope isn’t pointing straight up, the viewing scope is too far off the floor to use.
No problem. They have ladders. And if those aren’t enough — the entire floor can rise. The thing is a gigantic elevator.
Galileo discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter — Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa. The fifth, Amalthea, was discovered in this telescope. One of the first targets for the telescope was Saturn. Astronomers immediately discovered that Saturn’s rings have gaps between them — previously it was thought that the complex ring system was a solid disk.
Though it’s been over a hundred years since the telescope was constructed, it’s still largely original equipment. You will be hard-pressed to find a more impressive feat of Victorian engineering.
It took the mules and donkey teams from six hours to two days or more to cart the components of the telescope and the building materials for the observatory and support buildings and residences up the mountain. It took us about an hour of hair raising cliff driving and tight hairpin turns to make the ascent. We passed dozens of bicyclists who clearly had no care for their own safety.
The road up the mountain was called the best road in all California. If that’s the best road… well.
Lick Observatory — worth the trip if you find yourself in the San Jose area and don’t get carsick 🙂
Obligatory “I can see that from my house!” comment… though there are few places in Silicon Valley where one cannot see it. It is also the one place that gets snow every year, so I can also say I can see snow from my house even if it is practically at sea level and hasn’t seen any snow stick since that freak storm back in ’76.
There is also a Mt. Hamilton Road street sign in our garage, a memento of a misspent youth.
Once I saw it, it was only a matter of time before I went up there 🙂 Back when I lived in Salinas, the snow on Mt Toro was the first sign of winter.
Oh, so you’re the one who stole that sign 🙂