Photo Lens Registers Rays Predating Dinosaurs (Feb, 1938)

Photo Lens Registers Rays Predating Dinosaurs

BELIEVED by its makers to be the fastest in the world, a new astronomical photographic lens has been used at Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, Calif., for taking pictures of light rays which, scientists claim, left distant stars before dinosaurs trod the earth. In conjunction with the 100-inch reflector at Mt. Wilson, the new lens has photographed spectra of nebulae 30,000 times fainter than the faintest star visible to the unaided eye.

Dr. M. L. Humason, who conducted the Mt. Wilson Observatory tests, reported that the speed of the observatory’s spectrograph was doubled through use of the new lens, which has a speed of F. 0.59. Astronomical data placed the nebulae observed by Dr. Humason as being an estimated distance of 80 million light years from the earth. Through use of the new lens, scientists can now observe faint objects which have previously been deemed hopeless from an astronomical viewpoint, according to Dr. Humason.