A closer look at the incredible primary mirror of the Hale: the largest single-piece mirror ever made for a telescope (I think). It is at the top of the structure shown... the instrument cage below it is where the Cassegrain focus is, and where various instruments are mounted to the focus. This scope is not really used for eye-viewing; it's used with cameras, or as a camera, if plates are exposed up at the primary focus (which is how they did it in the old days).

     


This is the concrete mass used in place of the mirror while the instrument was assembled and set up. When the 15-ton mirror arrived after its perilous journey all the way from New York State, the concrete replica was hauled outside and dumped by the driveway, where it remains today.

     


The view up there (5500'MSL) is stupendous... here we see a large forest fire raging just beyond that ridge (NE of Big Bear).

     



And to the SE, another fire... seen from the exterior catwalk of the 200" dome. That's the 18" telescope's dome in the foreground. The 18", before recently being retired, was used to discover 50 comets, including the famous Shoemaker-Levy comet.

     


The 24" dome.

     


An arty shot of the "Big Eye"... what you can't see here is that the dome was rotating.





For much, much better photos and more info:
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/scopes.html