A second Sky Survey is now essentially complete. At Palomar a 60-inch telescope owned jointly by Caltech and the Carnegie Institution of Washington was completed in 1969. It is used for photometry, spectroscopy, and photography. A multipurpose solar equatorial telescope has been installed at an observing station at Big Bear Lake and is now run jointly with the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The unique atmospheric conditions in this area make possible investigations of the fine structure of the solar atmosphere.
Emphasis is on high-resolution spectroscopy, magnetography, and cinematography.
The Owens Valley Radio Observatory is in a radio-quiet location 400 km north of Pasadena, near Big Pine, California. The 40-m telescope is used for studies of radio sources and of the microwave background radiation. The array also enables detailed studies of the sun, planetary atmospheres, and the envelopes around evolved stars. Each Keck Telescope has four times the power of the Palomar 200-inch. It is planned to combine them as an interferometer of unprecedented power.