First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe (35 page)

“Do you ever dream about this telescope?” I asked him.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” He sounded embarrassed. “I dream about it all the time.” He said that he experienced recurrent dreams about the Hale Telescope. “The dreams are always set in prime focus, and I don’t know whether you would call them dreams or nightmares.” He would be sitting on the tractor seat at prime focus and staring down into the mirror through the eyepiece of a camera. “I see a set of red crosshairs with a guide star on them.” He said that
he might also hear human voices singing the words “et lux aeterna luceat eis”—“May the eternal light shine on them.” Listening to the voices, he would punch the paddle, trying to get the crosshairs zeroed on his guide star, trying to see something faint and indiscernible in the mirror, one of those things out there. But he was never able to quite
see
the thing, whatever it was. “What it all means,” he said, “I don’t know.” He turned around and said, “The sky is coming up.” The head of astronomical twilight was creeping over the eastern ridge of Palomar Mountain. “We’d better get down,” he said.

The lift pulled away and descended. It came to a halt, and Jim Gunn walked onto the floor, moving respectfully beneath the Hale Telescope, covering his flashlight with his hand, because 4-shooter would be taking data until the moment of astronomical dawn.

And dawn had arrived. Maarten Schmidt took command. He stood behind the night assistant and said, “Regretfully, Juan, you may stop the transit whenever you want.”

“Starting the pumps,” Juan said. A high-pitched whine ramped up. The telescope floated on Flying Horse telescope oil.

Don Schneider stood looking at the video screen. “The sky is holding up pretty well,” he said, meaning that he could see galaxies even while twilight took hold. A moment later he said, “We’re losing it.” The mirror caught the dawn and flared, and the galaxies washed away and vanished from the television screens.

“Take it to zenith,” Maarten said.

Juan hit the slew switches.

Don hovered over Juan. “Look at his hands,” Don said. “They’re trembling with fear.”

“Rock steady!” Juan protested, raising his voice over the rumble of the slew. “We are there,” Juan said.

“Mirror closed?” asked Maarten.

“The mirror is closed,” Juan said.

Don went downstairs to collect the last computer tape of the night. He returned in a moment and placed the tape in the cardboard box.

“Good night, Juan.”

“Good night.”

“See you tomorrow night.”

The astronomers hurried out of the data room and crossed the summit of Palomar Mountain, following a trail that took them down to the Monastery, where they would sleep all day. This was Don’s favorite moment: threading among cedars in the cool light.

Juan also liked morning. He enjoyed the feeling that civilization had entrusted the Big Eye to him. He took his time putting the Big Eye to sleep. He closed the dome. He inspected an empty glass jar that had recently held a mass of Oreos. He noted the weather in the Observatory Log: “Fog—partly clear, then clear—light NW wind.” He donned his hard hat and stuffed his notebooks into the marinated-jalapeños box and carried the box to his locker. He found a rag in the locker and stepped on the rag. He walked in zigzags underneath the Hale Telescope, holding the rag under his toe, scuffing up the clear puddles of Flying Horse telescope oil that always bled a little from the bearings, a few tablespoons a night.

He was looking forward to watching the morning news with Lily. They would sit at the kitchen table in their house, and she would ask him how things had gone. “Todo fue bien”—all went well. As his day ended, hers began; she taught school on the mountain. He would sleep through the morning, wake up at noon, maybe cut a little firewood, sleep through the afternoon. The Hale Telescope never appeared in his dreams.

He left his time card by the door: he had logged eleven hours. He opened the door. The sky had become a transparent blue. He closed the door behind him and stepped into the parking lot. He saw pink in the east, milky fog in the valleys, and a few late stars fading fast. He liked to look into the blue of morning. This was such a beautiful feeling. That clear color in the air told him that he and all the other night assistants and astronomers on Palomar Mountain had been working hard up there last night. Working hard on the sky. He touched the brim of his hard hat and glanced back at the dome, white and round like an ancient temple, while a thought crossed his mind, by no means for the first time, that he was only paying his respects to a temple of science.

Juan Carrasco. Senior night assistant at Palomar Observatory. The man who operates the Hale Telescope for the astronomers. Former barber.

James E. (Jim) Gunn. American astronomer. The only astronomer who has completely distinguished himself as a theorist, as an observer of things in the sky, and as a builder of instruments.

Donald (Don) Schneider. American astronomer. Software wizard. Born on a wheat farm in Nebraska. Became an astronomer because he wasn’t any good at farming.

Maarten Schmidt. Dutch astronomer living in the United States. In 1963, he discovered the true nature of quasars, one of the most important discoveries in the history of astronomy.

Eugene (Gene) Shoemaker. American astrogeologist. Discovered the first known asteroid-impact craters on the earth. Expert in asteroids and comets that could hit the earth.

Carolyn Shoemaker. American astronomer, married to Eugene Shoemaker. Top discoverer of comets in history.

accretion disk
. A disk of material rotating in orbit around a massive object such as a planet, a star, or a
black hole
. The rings around Saturn are an accretion disk. A burning accretion disk is thought to form around a black hole in the center of a
quasar
, and this disk is thought to be the source of a quasar’s light.

asteroid
. Small body of rock or metal in orbit around the sun. A type of
minor planet
.

Balmer series of hydrogen spectral lines
. A regular series of sharply defined colors emitted by heated hydrogen gas. When Maarten Schmidt saw these colors in a quasar, in 1963, they told him that quasars are violent, energetic objects located a vast distance from the earth.

black hole
. A place where matter has collapsed upon itself and punched a hole in spacetime, out of which no light can escape. Time in a black hole dies or comes to an end.

Cassegrain cage
, or
Cass cage
. A room that hangs from the bottom of the Hale Telescope, under the mirror, containing equipment.

Cassegrain focus
. A focal point in a
reflecting telescope
located just below the center of the main mirror (i.e., the
primary mirror)
at the bottom of the telescope.
CCD
. Charge-coupled device. An electronic silicon light-sensing chip used in place of photographic film in a camera. Extremely sensitive to light.

comet
. Small body of ice or icy rock in orbit around the sun. Near the sun, the comet’s ice evaporates, creating a tail of gases streaming away from the nucleus of the comet. When comets go extinct (lose their tails) they may be indistinguishable from
asteroids
.

dark matter
, or
missing mass
. The main constituent of the universe. No one knows what it is.

dark time
. The moonless time of the month.

data room
. Small room beside the telescope where astronomers work.

decomposition of light
. The making of a
spectrum
of light by passing the light through a prism or other apparatus, thereby smearing the light apart into its constituent colors (wavelengths or energies).

earth-crossing asteroid
. An asteroid or extinct
comet
traveling on an orbit that intersects the orbit of the earth and is therefore liable to hit the earth.

first light
. A technical term from astronomy signifying the moment when starlight is allowed to fall on a new mirror for the first time. Also used metaphorically in this book to mean (1) seeing something for the first time, and (2) the earliest light emitted from objects when the universe was young.

4-shooter
. Electronic camera somewhat larger than a refrigerator, designed and built by James Gunn with a team of instrument builders, some of whom are known as the Wizards of the Wastebasket. The camera is installed at the bottom of the Hale Telescope.

galaxy
. A vast cloud of stars, gas, dust, and unknown material. Contains up to several trillion stars. Comes in a variety of shapes.

guide star
. A bright star used as a reference point for guiding a telescope while the telescope is tracking the sky (which moves overhead, due to the rotation of the earth).

horseshoe bearing
. A
C
-shaped steel bearing, wet with oil, used to support a telescope as it swings around. The horseshoe bearing on the Hale Telescope is the largest bearing of any kind in the world, measuring forty-six feet across.

impact structure
. A large eroded or buried impact crater on the earth. Can be more than a hundred miles across.

light
. Electromagnetic radiation composed of photons, or packets of energy, which manifests itself as both waves and particles. Includes radio waves, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, X rays, and gamma rays—all are forms of light.

lookback time
. The amount of time it takes for light from an object to reach the earth. Looking farther outward into the sky is equivalent to looking backward in time, since the farther one sees outward, the more ancient the image one sees.

Lyman alpha spectral line
. A sharply defined peak of colored light coming from hot hydrogen gas such as that found in a
quasar
.

Main Asteroid Belt
. A zone of asteroids orbiting the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

minor planet
. An
asteroid
or a
comet
.

night assistant
. Professional telescope operator. Never an astronomer.

Oreo
, Staple of the nocturnal diet of Palomar astronomers.

paddle
. A remote-control device with buttons on it, which an astronomer holds in her hands and uses to control the fine motions of a telescope.

Palomar Glue
(slang). Transparent tape reinforced with threads of fabric. “Palomar Glue is what holds this place [Palomar Observatory] together”—James Gunn.

primary mirror
. The main mirror in a reflecting telescope, located at the bottom of the telescope tube.

prime focus
. A focal point of a reflecting telescope, located near the mouth of the telescope.

prime focus cage
. A small chamber at the mouth of the Hale Telescope where an observer can sit, looking down onto the main mirror, and where light-gathering instruments may be installed.

Prime Focus Club
. A small, mysterious club of unidentified astronomers who claim to have made love with someone while in the prime focus cage of the Hale Telescope.

quasar
. A pointlike source of brilliant light of all colors. Quasars are very distant, primeval objects, deep in lookback
time
, near the limit of the visible universe. The word
quasar
comes from “quasi-stellar object.” Thought to be a hot, burning core of a galaxy which contains a black hole at its center.

redshift
. Reddening, or lengthening, of light waves emitted by an object that is receding from earth. Used as a gauge of relative distance to an object in the sky. The higher the redshift, the farther away the object is.

reflecting telescope
. A telescope that uses a mirror to gather light.

Schmidt telescope
. A telescope design invented by Bernhard Schmidt. It has a corrector plate made of thin transparent glass, placed at the front of the telescope like a circular window. This plate bends the rays of incoming light in such a way as to give the telescope a wide field of view while making it very efficient at gathering light.

seeing, the
. A precise measure of turbulence in the atmosphere. The better the seeing, the better a telescope on earth can form a pointlike image of a star.

slew
. To move a telescope very quickly across the sky.

spectrum
. An image or plot showing light from an object broken into its constituent colors (or wavelengths or energies). See also
decomposition of light
.

structure up there
. Thin, transparent clouds veiling the sky. Bad news for astronomers.

Trojan asteroid
. A minor planet that travels in Jupiter’s orbit, named after a hero from the Trojan war. There are two clouds of Trojan asteroids, one cloud traveling sixty degrees
ahead
of Jupiter in Jupiter’s orbit (the Greeks), the other traveling sixty degrees
behind
Jupiter in Jupiter’s orbit (the Trojans).