So are two of Southern California’s premier scientific institutions doomed by the wildfires currently ravaging the Los Angeles basin?
In the case of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the answer appears to be no. The massive Station Fire, which so far has torched more than 105,000 acres in the mountains north of Los Angeles, has been dancing with the fringes of the municipality of La Cañada Flintridge. That’s where JPL – despite its official mailing address of Pasadena – is actually physically located. But according to city officials, the fire has moved out of the area and is no longer a threat. JPL is reopening today, and mission engineers will start re-operating the NASA rovers on Mars.
The situation is far more dire for the historic Mount Wilson Observatory, which the Station Fire is approaching from the west. Staff there are no doubt remembering the 2003 firestorm that obliterated the major research telescopes on Mt. Stromlo, Australia.
George Ellery Hale established the Mt. Wilson observatory in 1904, and over the years it has managed to retain a significant research role despite the ever-encroaching light pollution from the Los Angeles basin. Among other things there’s a new adaptive optics system on the 100-inch Hooker telescope, used by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s to establish distances to variable stars in the Andromeda galaxy, proving that galaxies existed beyond the Milky Way. Georgia State also runs an interferometric array on the mountain, as does the University of California, Berkeley.
Observatory staff evacuated completely over the weekend, and are watching the flames sweep closer. Director Hal McAlister has been updating the observatory website with the situation. You can also check out the webcam of the summit, unless it goes down in flames, here.
Other coverage includes:
Kelly Beatty, a contributing editor at Sky & Telescope (full disclosure: and my former boss).
Twitter feeds of Mike Brown (Caltech) and Emily Lakdawalla (Planetary Society)
No matter the fate of the observatory, the Station Fire has already taken a huge toll. Two firefighters, Ted Hall and Arnie Quinones, died on Sunday battling it.