Posts Tagged ‘Mount Wilson’
Spreading the news
..like fire
EDIT: The scare is now hopefully over and thankfully it was a scare!!! This last blog post from Sky and Telescope summarises what happened. All is well.
Read also this appeal from Mt Wilson director to rebuild and fortify the Observatory against future fires: Fire Recovery Appeal
Image: NASA Earth Observatory
When big news happens, it happens fast, but not as fast as reporters would have us believe. The 24-hour coverage of unfolding events often boils down to a constant repetition of a 15-minute chunk of images, comments, witness reports and the most dramatic images that could be found – and it’s the same on almost all news channels. Why would that still work? Because people want to know if there is anything new. At any moment, as soon as it happens.
Astronomers are not at bay from this urge to know. Mount Wilson is threatened by the fires raging in the Californian mountains and on top of Mount Wilson is Mont Wilson Observatory, where many chapters in the history of astronomy have been written. Many world-view changing discoveries were made at Mount Wilson but I’m not here to list them, it would sound too much like an obituary and we’re not there (yet and hopefully it won’t get to that!).
So what are our news outlets for this ongoing yet specific new item? Most of us turn to twitter for the last minute news and many astronomy bloggers have posted news and thought about Mount Wilson. I am just going to do what the news channels who cannot be on site do: repeat what others say. Below you’ll find link to the latest blog entries about Mount Wilson from the Astronomy blogosphere.
- Astroengine.com update
- Palomar Skies: Good news
- Animation as seen from the Spitzer Science Center
- Universe Today
- LA Times blog
- Spaceports
- Spacewriter.com watching from space
- AstroEngine.com update
- Franck Marchis – Some positive news?
- Patricia Philips on Space News Examiner
- Bad Astronomy – Fires reach Mt Wilson
- Palomar Skies
- Discovery channel – Space blog
- Sky and Telescope
- JPL Nasa Photojournal
- Mark Henderson (Times Online)
- Gerard van Belle’s Cosmic Diary
- Astroengine.com
- The Planetary Society
- Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy
- Daniel Holz in Cosmic Variance
- Franck Marchis’ Cosmic Diary
- Mike Brown’s blog
- A man with a PhD (Richard Gayle)
- Tom’s Astronomy blog
- Where the Sun hits the Sky
- UCLA Today (more newsletter than blog)
On Twitter, follow:
For updates and the latest news go to the update page on the Mount Wilson Observatory website, which in case of loss of power on Mount Wilson (where the web server is located) will be relocated to here, and the Tower cam, the onsite webcam showing the progression of the fire.
We are all hoping hard that the fate of Mount Wilson is not sealed like that of Mount Stromlo was in 2003 and in the meantime, we keep updated wherever we can.
If you find another blog entry about Mount Wilson, let me know and I’ll add it to the list above.
