Week 48.1 Pasadena and Caltech

So, the real reason I am in the US is not to take photographs but to attend a meeting at Caltech about the Euclid satellite. Yes, there is still more than four years before launch but there is a lot of work to do. Although it is primarily a European mission, there is strong American involvement: the near-infrared detectors used in one of the instruments are being provided by a US firm (we still don’t know how to make them in Europe). In return for this participation, several groups in the US are taking part in science groups inside the project (yes, I know it is complicated: there are more than a thousand scientists registered in the project).  What this means is that my US friends have to make several trips a year to the Europe, so it was thought to be a good idea to have at least one meeting in the US, preferably somewhere warm!  A few views of the Caltech campus:

California of course has been one of the most important places in the world for astronomy since the beginning of the 20th century. Mount Wilson, where Edwin Hubble made measurements demonstrating the expansion of the Universe is only a few hours’ drive away. In the 1990s, The University of California and Berkeley Labs, thanks to a grant the W. M. Keck foundation built the world’s first 10m-class telescopes on Mauna Kea.

Here are a few photographs taken around Pasadena mostly at night (there was not really any time during the day to take photographs). The first photograph is from my hotel room, and is a photographic quotation. Although the image I am thinking is of a place much less wealthy than Pasadena.

A few photographs of the meeting. Mostly to show that astronomers are not old guys with grey hair, as some people think :-).

That’s it for this time. Next: the Salton sea!

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Technical. Photographs were taken with a Leica M6 and (mostly) a Summicron f2.0/50mm. Film: Kodak Tri-X 400 developed in HC110 B for 6mins.