Technicians have been trudging through heavy snowdrifts and steering clear of falling slabs of snow and ice to perform vital maintenance, but the famed facility has gone blind.
A huge slab of ice and snow slides off the huge domed roof of the Great Refractor telescope at Mount Hamilton’s Lick Observatory and smashes thunderously to the asphalt.
Snow covers Lick Observatory where the Shane telescope, the facility’s largest, catches a ray of sunshine, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. Copious snowfall has interrupted the observatory’s mission of observing the skies. A few hundred yards away, inside a cavernous dome, four space heaters provided a jury-rigged antidote to humidity and condensation that could damage the Shane telescope — the observatory’s largest, with a 10,000-pound glass mirror. A mop bucket sits near the telescope’s base. “When you get so much snow and ice on the domes, you get leaks, so we have some buckets in strategic places,” Gates said.
After the first big snow in February, telescope technician Donnie Redel climbed 40 feet up the Shane telescope’s dome to shovel snow off the encircling catwalk. But after heavier snow fell, avalanches coming off the dome made that work unsafe. Redel, who also maintains the laser astronomers use to zap the atmosphere and create a “false star” reference point for canceling out atmospheric turbulence, typically enjoys snow. Now, he said, he’s “over it.
The snowstorms also threw a big wrench into the daily lives of the 15 scientists and observatory staff who live in houses and apartments on site, some with their families, Gates said. Three electricity lines went down amid high winds and heavy snow, shutting off outside power for more than three days.
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