Mount Palomar, peak (6,126 feet [1,867 metres]) in Cleveland National Forest, southern California, U.S. It lies about 40 miles (65 km) north-northeast of San Diego. The nearly 2,000-acre (800-hectare) Palomar Mountain State Park extends up the mountain slope, and the Palomar Observatory (operated by the California Institute of Technology), one of the Hale Observatories, occupies a 720-acre (290-hectare) plateau at the top and can be reached by the Highway to the Stars. The peak was once called Smith Mountain but reverted to its Mexican name, Palomar (meaning “place of the pigeons”), in 1901.
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California, constituent state of the United States of America. It was admitted as the 31st state of the union on September 9, 1850, and by the early 1960s it was the most populous U.S. state. No version of the origin of California’s name has been fully accepted, but there is…
San Diego, port and city, seat (1850) of San Diego county, southern California, U.S. It lies along the Pacific Ocean at San Diego Bay, just north of the international border with Mexico and some 120 miles (195 km) southeast of Los Angeles. The city consists of two portions of unequal…
California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology, private coeducational university and research institute in Pasadena, California, U.S., emphasizing graduate and undergraduate instruction and research in pure and applied science and engineering. The institute comprises six divisions: biology; chemistry and chemical engineering; engineering and applied science; geologic and planetary sciences; humanities and…
Hale Observatories, astronomical research unit that included the Palomar Observatory of the California Institute of Technology and the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Both observatories were established under the guidance of the American astronomer George Ellery Hale. The…
North AmericaNorth America, third largest of the world’s continents, lying for the most part between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer. It extends for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) to within 500 miles (800 km) of both the North Pole and the Equator and has an east-west extent of 5,000 miles. It…