2. Astronomy
  3. Large Observatories

Yerkes

Yerkes Observatory was the first step that George Hale took on the way to building the 200” telescope at Mount Palomar. The main instrument is a 40” diameter telescope which today is still the largest operating refracting telescope in the world. Except for the black & white photos, the rest of the photos in this gallery were taken in the early 90’s.
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21, The moon light was passing through the dome slot and lighting up the 60 foot long white tube. The red arcs on the inside of the dome were coming from the safety lighting.
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21, The moon light was passing through the dome slot and lighting up the 60 foot long white tube. The red arcs on the inside of the dome were coming from the safety lighting.

Yerkes0021B

  • 19, There are four pulley and cable assemblies like this around the floor that are used to raise and lower the floor to a comfortable position for the astronomer.
  • 20. That night we opened the 11 foot wide shutters to do some observing (even though there was almost a full moon). You can see the telescope through the dome slot.
  • 21, The moon light was passing through the dome slot and lighting up the 60 foot long white tube. The red arcs on the inside of the dome were coming from the safety lighting.
  • 22. You can see the three stars in Orion’s belt through the dome slot. Even though the moon was out Orion’s Nebula was still spectacular when looking through a 40” telescope. It was very easy to see all the companion stars to the four stars in the Trapezium.
  • 31. I’ll be the first to admit that this is not a very impressive photo of the moon. However, I couldn’t resist taking the eyepiece off the 40” and holding my camera (with lens removed) up to the image plane and snapping a photo. So technically this is a hand held photo of the moon taken with a 60 foot focal length.
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