The Palomar Mountain Observatory, one of the world’s most iconic and important scientific facilities, comes into to focus as todays #stampoftheday and, in doing so, provides some wise advice on life.

The stamp in question is a 3-cent stamp issued in on August 30, 1948 that depicts the observatory, which in 1949 began using the 200-inch Hale Telescope, a tool that has been – and continues to be – the locus of significant astronomical research.

The observatory and its signature telescope were conceived of and started under the direction of astronomer George Ellery Hale, a graduate of MIT and a founder of Caltech. By the 1920s, Hale had overseen the construction of three telescopes each of them the world’s largest at the time they began operations: the 40-inch telescope at the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and the 60- and 100-inch telescopes at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena.

Astronomers had been using these to make major discoveries about the large-scale structure of the universe, but the telescopes’ technical limitations were presenting obstacles to that work. Hale, therefore, began pressing for the construction of a larger and more technologically advanced telescope that would be located on a site where, unlike Mt. Wilson, observations would not be hampered by lights from the expansion of nearby urban areas. He pressed his case in the popular media, such as a 1928 article published Harper’s Magazine where he compared the proposed work to the European voyages of discovery, which, he noted, often discovered things they did not expect to find. In 1928 he also sought and received a $6 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation (to CalTech) for a new observatory and a 200-inch reflecting telescope. A few years later, Hale selected the site of the observatory, on Palomar Mountain, in San Diego, where, he believed, observations would not be hindered by light pollution from growing urbanization.

During the 1930s, Hale assembled a remarkable team of engineers and designers from academia and industry who worked to overcome a host of significant technical challenges to the project. Many of these involved the mirror which Hale, in his 1928 article, has said was “the only uncertainty” in his proposed project. Construction on the dome began in 1936 and continued after Hale died in 1938. The outbreak of World War II disrupted work on the mirror for several years but work was restarted after the war ended and the telescope – which was named for Hale—was ready for use in early 1949.

Since that time astronomers have used the Hale telescope to make several notable discoveries. According to Palomar’s website, Walter Baade, did work showing the Andromeda Galaxy was twice as far away than had been previously estimated, a finding that for astronomers meant the size of the Universe had doubled. Allan Sandage did research that laid the groundwork for later work showing thst cosmic expansion is accelerating. Baade and others also did research that resulted in a new understanding of galaxy evolution and stellar evolution. And Maarten Schmidt and collaborators discovered quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources), signals from other galaxies, which in turn laid foundation for our understanding that most major galaxies, including the Milky Way, have supermassive black holes at their centers.

Apparently inspired by the many discoveries made via close observations at the observatory, Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s last book, “Palomar,” describes how Mr. Palomar, the book’s title character, tries to quantify complex phenomena in a search for fundamental truths on the nature of being. In one of the book’s 27 chapter, which is set in a cheese store, Palomar muses that ”behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky: meadows caked with salt that the tides of Normandy deposit every evening; meadows scented with aromas in the windy sunlight of Provence; there are different flocks, with their stablings and their transhumances; there are secret processes handed down over the centuries.” Calvino continues, “This shop is a museum: Mr. Palomar, visiting it, feels as he does in the Louvre, behind every displayed object the presence of the civilization that has given it form and takes form from it.” In these and other observations, Calvino writes, Mr. Palomar constantly aspires to come ”a step closer to true knowledge, which lies in the experience of the flavors, composed of memory and imagination at once.”

To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand much about the actual discoveries made by astronomers at Mt. Palomar. But I do know they are important. And I’ve not read much (if any) of Calvino, who I’ve found too complex for me to fully grasp and enjoy. But I like the idea that in our observations and experiences we should aspire to come a step closer to true knowledge.

I think that helps explain why I’ve been captured by this #stampoftheday experiment. Each day, I am learning something new and many times, like today, I’m also being prodded to think about larger questions as well. There are worse ways to spend a bit of my time every day.

Be well, stay safe, aspire to come a a step closer to true knowledge, fight for justice and work for peace.