Remembering the old observatory on Mount Graham before the big fire

We used to haul glass plates up there, but after 2004 everything switched to digital sensors. Anyone still have shots from the old plate days?

3 comments

3 Comments

alice_palmer201mo ago

Yeah, @blair_dixon has a point about how recent that was. It's like how we all had CDs one day and then just... didn't. Makes you wonder what other perfectly good stuff we just stopped using overnight.

paigem451mo ago

Oh man, glass plates! My old astronomy professor had a few from the 90s he kept in a wooden case. He'd let us hold one up to the light, and you could see the actual stars as tiny little specks in the emulsion. It felt like holding a piece of the sky, way more real than a file on a screen. I wonder what happened to all that old physical data after the switch.

blair_dixon1mo ago

Wait, the 90s? I figured those glass plates would be from like the 1920s or something. That's way more recent than I thought. It's wild to think they were still doing that while I was watching cartoons as a kid. Makes you wonder how much of that old stuff just got tossed when the labs went digital.