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Aug. 31st, 2009 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienWell, the Mount Wilson Observatory doesn't seem to have burned down yet; I found a sort of mirror for the webcam and it still seems to be up, or was half an hour ago. Lots of smoke, but no flames in sight. The last news from the director didn't sound good, though; the firefighters had been pulled back from the staging area near the mountain, and plans were not to fight the fire on the ground if it came through. They did put in a lot of effort yesterday getting the place as buttoned down as possible.
I have selfish professional reasons for wanting the observatory to survive; I work with the data from both the solar towers, and I know the scientists. Those are both elderly instruments, not cutting-edge but unique, and valuable from sheer longevity. In the bigger picture, that's a small part of what stands to be lost and has already been lost. I don't feel comfortable asking firefighters to risk their lives for telescopes, however historic, any more than I was comfortable with the risk to the astronauts upgrading Hubble, but I do hope the telescopes will survive.
I have selfish professional reasons for wanting the observatory to survive; I work with the data from both the solar towers, and I know the scientists. Those are both elderly instruments, not cutting-edge but unique, and valuable from sheer longevity. In the bigger picture, that's a small part of what stands to be lost and has already been lost. I don't feel comfortable asking firefighters to risk their lives for telescopes, however historic, any more than I was comfortable with the risk to the astronauts upgrading Hubble, but I do hope the telescopes will survive.
