Lick Observatory

Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, originally constructed from 1876 to 1887, located on the summit of California's Mount Hamilton (California) Mount Hamilton, and, since 1888, owned and operated by the University of California. The observatory, named in honor of James Lick, is managed by the multi-campus unit University of California Observatories, headquartered at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Category:Astronomy Quotes The Lick Observatory had been planned and was essentially completed before astronomers realized that electricity and photography would become the chief servants in the great Observatory observatories. It was one of Edward S. Holden Director Holden's first duties to provide photographic equipment. Lick Observatory#Early history The 33-inch correcting lens, to convert the 36-inch visual refractor into a 33-inch photographic instrument, was finished in 1888; the Willard-Crocker photographic telescope was completed in 1890; the Manuel Foster Observatory D. O. Mills spectrograph was provided in 1894; and the Crossley telescope Crossley reflecting telescope was secured in 1895 and installed in 1896. An electric plant to supply current for purely scientific purposes was provided by gift of Thomas A. Edison in 1891. William Wallace Campbell W. W. Campbell, Biographical Memoir of Edward Singleton Holden Biographical Memoirs of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Vol. 8 1919 https://books.google.com/books?id=uLgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA354 347–372 (quote from p. 354; pdf at biographicalmemoirs.org) A very ingenious plan was proposed by Howard Grubb Sir Howard Grubb to the Lick Trustees for placing the observer at a proper height (any where from zero to thirty-seven feet above the floor). The idea was to have a portion of the floor move bodily up and down, like an elevator. The plan was adopted by the Lick Trustees and the floor has been built by the Union Iron Works. ...The moving floor is 61½ feet in diameter and weighs 50,000 pounds, which is nearly all counterpoised. Edward S. Holden, Hand-book of the Lick Observatory of the University of California revised Bancroft Company 1888 https://books.google.com/books?id=t-pHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA34 34 (135 pages) The productivity of Lick Observatory (LO) is reviewed over the years from 1965 to 2019, a 55 yr period which commences with the C. Donald Shane telescope Shane 3 m telescope being the second-largest astronomical reflector in the world, but transitions into the era of 10 m ground-based optical telescopes. The metric of productivity used here is the annual number of refereed papers within which are presented results that are based at least in part on observations made with the telescopes of LO on Mount Hamilton (California) Mount Hamilton. Criteria are set forth that have guided the counting of this metric. A bibliography of papers pertinent to observations from Lick Observatory has been compiled, and is made available through a NASA ADS library. The overall productivity of the observatory, counting all telescopes, went through a broad maximum between the years 1975 and 1982. This period also corresponds to a maximum in productivity of the Shane 3 m telescope. An author network shows that this period is attended by the introduction of digital detector systems at LO, particularly at the Shane telescope. Following 1983 the overall productivity of LO shows a net long-term decrease but with two other lesser peaks superimposed on that decrease. A slightly smaller peak occurs around 1996 and is associated with programs taking advantage of Charge-coupled device CCD spectrometers at both cassegrain and coudé foci of the Shane telescope. A third lesser peak around 2012 can be attributed to a rise in History of supernova observation#Telescope observation extragalactic supernova studies originating out of UC Berkeley. Author networks serve to document the UC astronomical communities that were using LO telescopes at these peak times. Institutional affiliations of first authors are documented. Graeme H. Smith and Matthew Shetrone, Research Output Between 1965 and 2019 from the Use of Telescopes at Lick Observatory Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 132 1018 2020 125002 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/abc022/meta 10.1088/1538-3873/abc022 External links Category:Astronomy