Despite 13 days of fire raging in the forest surrounding Mount Wilson, Roger Ulrich said he was only anxious about the safety of his research facility for about two hours.
In addition to firefighters that were stationed on the site, the towercam, located on the top of the 150-foot solar tower used for the professor’s research, allowed him to see the true conditions of the area and the threat of the nearing fire.
“On Tuesday morning, I was watching the towercam before it went out, and I could see puffs of smoke rising from the observatory grounds,” said Ulrich, who is an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA. “I didn’t know that fire crews had returned at that time, so I was anxious.”
Mount Wilson is home to independent research facilities for UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley and Georgia State University, as well as major communications towers for Los Angeles. The area was threatened last Monday as the Station fire neared the observatory.
UCLA is in charge of a 150-foot solar tower on Mount Wilson, which measures the magnetic field for sunspots and large scale circulation.
The information gathered from the tower allows researchers to track certain aspects of climate change and helps space programs avoid dangers like solar outbursts, Ulrich said.
The only known damage to the Observatory was the loss of the connection that allows the transfer of information on and off the mountain. None the University’s work was lost because there are multiple copies stored in databases on campus, Ulrich said.
However, had the UCLA’s tower been damaged, it is unlikely that it would have been rebuilt, he said. The technology is very old, and it’s unique because, unlike many other telescopes around the world, it measures the whole sun rather than smaller features, he added.
“Because of the long record of data, the facility is somewhat unequaled around the world,” he said. “The quality and size of the image we have on Mount Wilson is probably one of the best available anywhere.”
In addition to the past week, there have been few gaps in data from the tower, which dates back to 1905, Ulrich said. The loss of this data is unfortunate, he added, because small sunspots began forming in the past week, a rare event in the stagnant and abnormal sun cycle that has been present for nearly two years.
There are fire precautions on Mount Wilson, including a 750,000 gallon water tank. A fire has never seriously damaged the facilities, though earthquakes have, Ulrich said.
Despite these precautions, not all the researchers are so sure of the safety of their facilities.
Ed Rhodes, principal investigator of 60-foot solar tower used by USC, said he is concerned about the amount of ash that could have entered the dome of the telescope. The tower measures solar oscillations in order to estimate internal structure and dynamics of the sun, a field called helioseismology.
“It’s the closest any fire has actually been to the observatory, that’s what’s so worrisome,” said the UCLA alumnus and former student of Ulrich.
He added that Mount Wilson is closed and he is unsure how long it will take to clean the area, which could prevent him from taking his students to the observatory for a class he is teaching in the fall.
“Hopefully at some point the situation will calm down enough that (the firefighters) will let the rest of us have some kind of idea what the conditions are like for our separate projects,” Rhodes said.
The fire has been burning since Aug. 26, and as of Monday, the estimated date of containment for the fire is Sept. 15, according to Nathan Judy, information officer for the forest service.
With contributing reports from Daniel Schonhaut, Bruin senior staff.