Blog 3 - Olivia Collins

Mount Wilson Observatory was founded in 1904 by George Ellery Hale. Together with various scientists and engineers, he started the world’s most prominent astronomical research facility. In 1919 it had the largest telescope in the world being 100-inch. The most well known discovery from the observatory is from Edwin Hubble. Hubble used the photographic plates from the 100-inch to see that the Andromeda Galaxy is its own galaxy and not a spiral nebula. He made this discovery by seeing a Cepheid variable star within the galaxy. This made him realize that because the Andromeda is so far away it had to be its own galaxy. This was the beginning of Hubble’s Law, which is considered the first observational basis of expansion of the universe. It is still considered one of the pieces of evidence in support of the Big Bang model. 

 Mount Wilson also played a role in the experiment to accurately measure the speed of light. Albert Michelson, who won a Nobel prize for working on this experiment, did work on it from Mount Wilson in 1924-1926. Michelson established that the speed of light is a fundamental constant. When he came to Mount Wilson it was near the end of his experimenting but here is where surveyed a 35-km pathway between two mountains which determined the distance to an accuracy of 2.5 cm. Using the eight-sided revolving mirror he obtained the value of 299,798 km/sec of the velocity of light. 


https://www.britannica.com/biography/A-A-Michelson 
https://www.mtwilson.edu/about-mwo/ 
https://www.space.com/26567-mount-wilson-observatory.html 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BLOG POST #8: IZZIE PANASCI TREE OF LIFE

Image
Discussing the Tree of Life project with the team at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Lab was an experience that ignited my curiosity and led me to ask many more questions than I had initially prepared to. What initially struck me about the project was that there was a co-dependent “duet,” collaboration between nature and technology. I have never really seen a collaboration of the sort, especially one that harnesses the power of life. The piece would not have the same meaning or importance if it were purely human-made, and it would not be much of a project for NASA with just a tree alone! Integrating these two ideas into one experimental project at first felt new to me. Still, after some reflection, I came to see it was not utterly irrelevant to my practice as an artist. Artists learn to integrate their work into the environment, regardless of whether or not that thing that they’ve created has a function. I think that the team working on this project must have to make similar considerations wh...
Read more

Blog Post #8 - Dang and Grimes

Blog Post #8 The Tree of Life             This project, taking inspiration from the Tree of Life by Julia Christensen, is about both longevity and public interest. Through exploring and understanding the Tree of Life project an important challenge stuck out; how to keep public interest for a project spanning 200 years. The Tree of Life project is faced with many challenges and obstacles stemming from the longevity of the project, but this issue seemed important because of the public funding that this project will rely on. The Tree of Life is both a global endeavor that will face and overcome many obstacles in both the art and science world.             One of the biggest challenges that NASA has faced over the years has been time. The current longest running missions at NASA are Voyager I and II. They were launched in 1977 and have been active for more t...
Read more

Blog #7- Sammy Keane

Image
Sammy Keane Blog #7  Since I was unable to attend the second JPL field trip due to unfortunate events, I found myself looking throughout NASA’s dense website. Juno, NASA’s mission to Jupiter, really stood out to me. Launched on August 5, 2011, the goal of this mission was to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that’s observations will lead to a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and planetary systems discovered around other stars (eyes on the solar system). In addition to that, Juno would look for solid planetary core, map its magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, and finally observe auroras (nasa.gov). Juno did not arrive at Jupiter until July 4th of 2016. Reading into Mission Juno allowed me to understand more about Jupiter, a planet that I before knew nothing about. For example, written on October 24,19, data from Juno has helped scientists discover that the swirling ban...
Read more