Babcock Memorial Symposium at Caltech Features a Galaxy of Speakers:

NINE ASTRONOMERS who played important roles in the histories of Mount Wilson and Las Campanas Observatories will speak at the Horace W. Babcock Memorial Symposium, 8:30 A.M.- 5:00 P.M. Friday, May 21, at Caltech's Beckman Institute.  This historic event, sponsored by the Carnegie Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, honors former Mount Wilson Observatory Director Horace Babcock.  It is free of charge and open to the public.

Horace Babcock (1912- 2003) joined the staff of Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories in 1946.  Working with his father, Harold Babcock, he developed the solar magnetograph, which has been used at the Mount Wilson 150-foot solar tower on a daily basis ever since to map the magnetic fields of the Sun.  In 1953, he was the first to propose adaptive optics as a means for improving the quality of images produced by ground-based telescopes.  He served as Director of the Mount Wilson and Palomar (later called Hale) Observatories from 1964 to 1978.

This is the schedule of Symposium talks:

8:30 A.M.         Reception

9:00 A.M.       Welcoming remarks by Wendy Freedman

9:10 A.M.         Horace Babcock's Early Years by  Donald Osterbrock

10:00 A.M.       Stellar Magnetism: A New Branch of Astrophysics by George Preston

10:40 A.M.       BREAK

10:50 A.M.       Horace Babcock: A Solar Perspective by Robert F. Howard

11:40 A.M.       The Promise of Adaptive Optics on Extremely Large Telescopes by Patrick McCarthy

12:30 P.M.       LUNCH

2:00 P.M.         Horace Babcock and the Inception of the Las Campanas Observatory: Part I by Arthur Vaughan

2:50 P.M.         Horace Babcock and the Inception of the Las Campanas Observatory: Part II by Robert Hoggan

3:30 P.M.         BREAK

3:40 P.M.         Las Campanas: The Early Days by Robert Brucato

4:20 P.M.         Concluding Remarks by Guido M√ºnch

PLEASE NOTE that this event is NOT in the well-known Beckman Auditorium.  It is in the auditorium of the Beckman Institute, which is directly west of the Beckman Auditorium.  For more information, call Carnegie Observatories at (626) 577-1122.