I agree... it is very important...

Are there any older, smaller telescopes nearby that still use the old eyepiece to the optics method? I know even the great Mount Palomar has that.

To my knowledge, no.... quite frankly the new technology is the way to go for usefull results... Keck is doing an open house for the observations of the deep impact mission- people will be able to see our observations in real time...

I'm talking show these people Saturn or the Andromeda galaxy or the Moon, something that will grab their attention and wonder and not leave them thinking the whole place is just for cryptic eggheads who don't care to share their knowledge with the "commoners". It might save you and other future observatories a lot of grief.



Again, I agree, but practicality gets in the way- you know, most people I work with would LOVE to let everyone know what we do... But the fact is that a LOT of what we do does not make for pretty pictures-

When I came here I had a naive idea that we could maybe set aside a night a month just to take cool pictures that would have a huge WOW factor... in reality that is not an option... telescope time runs about a buck fifty a second- it is scheduled months ahead of time.

we really do try to share what we can with the public... in fact i think we do a great job of that, but as science progresses the 'WOW' factor is going to require some education to get... for instance the extra solar planet discoveries (which Keck is the leader) involve careful analysis of spectra- absolutely no cool pictures- how do we share that?