Lick Observatory east of San Jose was our destination for today. We left our place in Morgan Hill and headed north on 101. Near San Jose the retarded Garmin directed us to exit and take Quimby Road east to County Road 130. The first mile or two of Quimby was a multi-lane parkway but soon it shriveled to a two-lane blacktop before morphing into a twisting upward incline with a width just inches wider than our four ton, 21 foot long, 6 foot wide F-250 pickup. We crept around miles of corners with sight lines of about 10 feet but, fortunately, we only encountered a few vehicles going the other or wrong way. After going up 1500 feet and then dropping about 1000 feet, we finally joined 130 for another 2500 feet of climbing on skinny, terrifying, poorly paved road to the observatory complex.
Although the access road is doo-doo, the views from the top of the mountain are spectacular. When it is clear, you can see Yosemite looking east and San Francisco looking northwest. It was clear enough for our visit to see about 1/4 of California. The Lick Observatory main building houses two telescope domes with observation slits, a 38″ refractor telescope and a 40 inch reflector. We waited around for a tour and were treated to a trip into the dome of the refractor built by old Lick himself, back in the 1890’s. The thing still works but its capabilities have been overwhelmed by the intervening 125 years of technological improvements.
After the tour and some impoverishment in the gift shop, Peg and I walked over to a nearby dome housing a 120 inch reflector telescope passing a small dome housing something called an automatic planet finder. Every clear night, the APF scans space looking not for stars but for the planets surrounding those stars. According to the staff, the APF has found thousands. At the 120 inch telescope, astronomy nerds were working on the telescope despite it being late on a Sunday. The nerds looked like the kind of guys that rarely leave the mountain, preferring to get as much time on the telescope as possible.
It takes a while to get to and leave this place. The last 18 miles of road to the observatory complex is mostly single-lane although some sections have a center line separating the two half-lanes from each other. Just this 18 mile section requires an hour to drive so if you are in a hurry and not riding a motorcycle, forget it. Once on top, though, the views and the observatory are great. It is free with the exception of the fuel and time required to get here.
A couple photos can be seen by clicking here