Diaries

Friday Night Photos Eyes On The Sky Edition

Happy Friday everyone. I hope everybody is doing well. Post any photos, memes, or music you like.

Last Saturday I drove up to Mount Palomar and toured Palomar Observatory. The observatory sits at about 5600ft elevation and has 4 telescopes, 18-inch, 48-inch, 60-inch and 200-inch. All but the 18-inch are still in use today. It's amazing how large a 200-inch telescope is. It makes my 6-inch Celestron telescope look like a child's toy.
The weather was beautiful, the drive in the mountains was enjoyable and the tour was informative. All in all a very good day.

Here's a few links that can explain things better than I can.
https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/about/history.html
https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/about/telescopes.html

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Open Thread - Thurs 29 June 2023: Pizza? At Pompeii?

Pizza? At Pompeii?

Archaeologists at Pompeii have uncovered a wall painting which seems to show a pizza, or something like a pizza; a pizza precursor, pre-pizza, or maybe a pizza-oid type of entity. The pizza, foccaccia or bread in the image doesn't have tomato sauce on it, of course. Tomatoes are a new world fruit/vegetable and weren't brought Europe until the 15 or 1600s at the earliest and the first evidence of their being used in cooking in Italy wasn't until the late 1600s. But still... It's bread, with a topping of maybe fruit and/or vegetables, and/or pesto, and spices and it sure looks like pizza!


Pizza at Pompeii, from the BBC article linked below

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