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Caltech's Palomar Observatory, in San Diego County,
is home to the venerable Hale 200-inch Telescope, as well as the 60-inch
instrument, the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope, and an 18-inch Schmidt camera. Come
visit the Palomar Observatory website. For observer
information, instrument specs, and telescope schedules, please visit the observers' site.
Keck Observatory
is perched atop the dormant volcano, Mauna Kea,
on the island of Hawaii. Keck is a joint effort of Caltech and the
University of California, consisting of twin 10-meter
telescopes, Keck I and Keck II.
Recently, the two telescopes have been used in combination, as
the Keck Interferometer ,
with sufficient power and resolution to detect planetary systems
around nearby stars.
We also have the old bluebook article
about the telescopes.
The Owens Valley Radio Observatory is located some
five hours north of Pasadena, near the Sierra Nevada range. The Observatory
is home to a variety of dishes and interferometers. Learn more from
the bluebook article, or visit the
official website.
The Thirty Meter Telescope formerly known as the California
Extremely Large Telescope is a project currently
underway by Caltech and the University of California, to build
a 30-meter diameter telescope for astronomy at visible and
infrared wavelengths. See artist's
Renderings of the Thirty-Meter Telescope, review
job postings for TMT,
read the CELT Conceptual Design Study,
and find further information on the official TMT website.
And at the other end of the size spectrum are the 0.35-meter and 0.25-meter
telescopes of the Robinson/Downs Rooftop Observatories. The Robinson 0.35-meter
(aka the Celestron-14) is used for undergraduate instruction, and is
also available for general use by authorized members of the Caltech and JPL
communities. The Downs 0.25-meter (C-10) will be coming on line soon
for a similar role. See the RDRO page for more
information.
The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory is a
10-meter dish atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. General information is
available in the bluebook article;
more details can be found at the
home page.
The Big Bear Solar Observatory is a world center
for observations of the Sun. Since July 1997, the facility has
been managed by the New Jersey Institute of Technology for
a university consortium which includes Caltech. Read the
bluebook entry to find out what
the scopes are doing in the middle of a lake, or go check out the
website.