The 100" building was as dark as the other telescope buildings we had been in, and as cold! The girls were getting quite cold as we walked around inside, which was unheated for obvious reasons. The other problem we had was that it was almost pitch black, with little in the way of lighting. This was fair enough for an observatory and we fully understood why, but it did mean that a lot of things we pointed the camera at with the aid of Larry's flashlight were almost unseen until the camera flash went off, and if it was wrong we had to take it again.
As we emerged out of the 100" building we went over to the canteen and sat down for a warm-up again, and met up with Don Nicholson who is the son of former obervatory astronomer Seth Nicolson. Don's father was at the Mount Wilson site between 1915 and 1957, and Don grew up with the scientists at the observatory. More info on Don and his father can be found at: http://www.astronomyoutreach.net/astronomers.d/nicholson.d/ plus other historical sites related to astronomy. Don was great to talk with and listen to as he recounted some of his wartime activities in England, but he is also very much involved in the Mount Wilson site, and was able to update Larry & Ken on some interesting new developments while we were there, which would effect them in the near future, but which we are not at liberty to reveal here.
We went out again into the mist which had come across the mountain tops, and walked around the perimeter track and had a look at some of the exterior views of the site. Soon it was time to get going, so we said our goodbyes and followed Larry & Ken back down the mountain to LA, where we split up. We went straight over to Brea to the restuarant where we were meeting up with Larry later, while he went off to drop Ken at his place and then he would meet us later.
At Brea we met with Rob & Kelley, Ron Haskell and Larry for a nice evening meal. They warned us about the size of the portions, and we were pleasantly surprised at the volume of excellent food, so much that none of us cleared our plates! We then left Brea to head back to San Francisco after saying our final goodbyes to everyone. It had been a great day for us, and we would like to express publically our thanks to Larry & Ken for their time at the site.
