Three Wonderful Mirrors, Mount Wilson Observatory

1916

Used In Place of a Telescope In Mount Wilson Observatory.

From Los Angeles by trolley car and burro back up through the pine forests one reaches the Wilson observatory. No dome or gigantic telescope greets the visitor when he gains the summit. A huge Noah's ark of canvas destroys all preconceived ideas of what an observatory should look like, and within three wonderful mirrors take the place of the great tubular telescope of other observatories.

The observatory building is constructed of canvas, the sides being set in the form of tiers of steeply overlapping eaves. This arrangement is calculated to allow for perfect ventilation and is re-enforced by a vertical wall of canvas, which can be raised or lowered at will to obtain an even temperature.

The peculiar arrangement of mirrors that replaces the familiar telescope is the center around which all interest in the observatory revolves. These mirrors are constructed at the Yerkes observatory and are the finest products of the optician's manufacturing skill. The enlarging mirror, which is supported by a pier of stone at the farther end of the building, is of concave glass four inches thick, and the scientists tell us it is of twenty-four inch aperture by sixty foot focus.

The glass is polished ever so often with jewelers' rouge upon pads of chamois skin and is burnished every week or ten days, in order to remove all possible dust. In addition a galvanized cover is kept over it when it is not in use. — Christian Herald.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.