Lick Observatory funding restored
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028413
Nature : On 29 October, the University of California (UC) system reversed its 2013 decision that UC Observatories should find outside funding for Lick Observatory. Located on Mount Hamilton in California, the observatory accounts for $1.3 million of UC Observatories’ $5 million budget for research and staff expenses. That budget also covers the Keck Observatory and the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, both in Hawaii. Lick currently hosts a 3-m telescope with modern instrumentation and a new 2.4-m automated planet-finding telescope. Opened in 1888, Lick was the first permanent mountaintop observatory, and it has contributed to the development of techniques for finding extrasolar planets and to the Nobel Prize–winning discovery that the universe’s expansion is accelerating.
