A trip to the Mt. Wilson Observatory with Thematic Option

By: Ngai Yeung ‘23

Like many people, I’ve never been to an observatory before, nor did I have any plans to do so. But when I saw the Thematic Option honors program’s latest field trip announcement, I suddenly had a new bucket list item to cross off. I signed up with my friend, and we went on a USC funded trip to the Mount Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Pasadena last Friday. 

The Mount Wilson Observatory is home to a few telescopes, two of which held records for being the biggest telescope in the world when they were built in the early 1900s. Los Angeles is pretty ideal for stargazing because of the clear skies and air, though light pollution in recent years has made it more difficult. 

We got there in the evening after an hour on the bus through winding mountain roads, just in time for sunset. The 20 or so of us — students from both Freshman Science Honors and Thematic Option — basked in the view on the walkway near the top of the 100-inch Hooker telescope. It’s the same telescope that Edwin Hubble used to prove that the universe extends beyond the Milky Way in 1923.

“It’s the grandfather of all telescopes,” said Tom Menghini, the executive director of the Mount Wilson Institute. He also told us how a charity concert was hosted inside the telescope dome just the other week, before taking us on a spin…in the telescope dome! We were inside the dome which began rotating, so we saw the sunset spin outside. (The rotation mechanism helps position the telescope.)

Before it got dark, we migrated to the smaller 60-inch telescope nearby for some hot chocolate and actual stargazing. The first thing we saw through the telescope was a binary star. To the naked eye, it’s just a single object, but zooming in using a telescope shows that they are two separate stars that are gravitationally pulled to and orbit each other. The one on the left was a bright gold, while the one was a dimmer blue, like two super shiny diamond studs. 

The telescope was, to my unrefined, devoid-of-science brain, like a reverse microscope. The eyepiece didn’t feel that much bigger and fit snugly, though I had to climb a set of portable stairs to reach it. Instead of facing down, I had to crane my head upwards. I could adjust the focus on both by using the knob on the side, though on the telescope it felt a lot scarier than a microscope because I was aware that I was touching a piece of equipment that costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. 

We also got to see Jupiter, which looked like the vertical cross section of a bland serradura pudding, and the surface of the moon, which looked exactly what it looks like in space movies — grey swiss cheese. Finally, after three hours of queuing, mingling, and more hot chocolate, we finished by looking at a cluster of stars. The sky wasn’t very clear that night, so we could barely see any stars with our naked eye. What we saw for the star cluster in the telescope was like what you’d see on a clear night outside the city. 

In talking with Tom and the other students, I learned a lot of random space facts, but I also learned how you actually control one of these gigantic telescopes thanks to John, our telescope operator. I thought the control booth looked like the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon, but operating it is actually a lot simpler than it looked at first glance. You just have to locate the star system you want to navigate the telescope to on the computer, take note of the coordinates, then control the four directions (North, East, South, West just like a regular arrow keypad) until the telescope hits those coordinates. John also has to monitor the wind speed and humidity outside, because if they get too high, he’d have to seal the dome and wait until weather conditions improve. 

I’m always in awe of the free trips and swag I get from this university, and this private tour of a fancy gigantic telescope at Los Angeles’ (second) most famous observatory certainly fits the bill. 

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