Hello OSSC Members & Friends,
You thought my June 2026 OSSC President’s Letter might be the last you heard from me!! But here I am again. You can always skip my missives and move on to something more interesting for you; so, I will ramble on a bit now about the Mt. Wilson event that was (IMHO) the best time we have had there yet. And since it was a historic place to visit and we have the OSSC History Project waiting for some momentum, I think we may seek to include information about the history of Mt. Wilson in with the History of the OSSC. More on that another time. For now, a brief review of the Mt. Wilson trip from my perspective.
Being a native of Southern California and having taken astronomy in high school (50 years ago) I built an 8” F/8 Newtonian telescope in the Fall of 1976. There are a couple of photos below, one from December 1976 taken in my room with a couple of galaxy photos on the bulletin board above the encyclopedias (no internet back then!!) And the second photo in the Fall of 1977 in my dad’s backyard in Tucson with my younger brothers. I attended the University of Arizona, starting in Astronomy and moving to Engineering Physics and Optics by the time I graduated in 1983. The apartment my mom & I lived in LA was very close to Century City, and from the top of Mt. Wilson I could see the two triangular-shaped buildings that were built while I was in high school. The point of this narrative is to say this trip to Mt. Wilson was extremely memorable in part because 50 years ago, I started on my astronomy journey.
Like many of us at this event, I took a bunch of photos, and you can see them here. I won’t go through a narrative about the photos, just have a look and let me know if you have any questions. Some of the other people took lots of photos and Michael Gordon says he will make a presentation that will likely be very impressive.
On June 17, 2015, while I was working for PI (Physik Instrumente) I had to go to the CHARA Observatory to diagnose some old PI precision motion systems that ended up being replaced with new ones. Here are some photos you might enjoy.
You may have heard that some of us stayed overnight at the Monastery. It was very nice and there are a few photos in the above link.
My old friend Dave Hasenauer was our tour guide extraordinaire, and I have no words to express my gratitude.
So, with that I will conclude and thank Scott Rowe for his excellence as the Mt. Wilson Coordinator for maybe 15 years, now passing the reins to Cecily Brown. Bob Cartland was also instrumental in many ways, not least of which was making sure the OSSC website was helping us organize this event.
