
he University of California's Lick Observatory has been in operation on the
4200-foot summit of Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California, since 1888.
The observatory is an active center of astronomical research with a long and notable
history. Over the years a wealth of material illustrating the
growth of astronomy since the observatory's founding accumulated on Mount Hamilton.
Much of that legacy has been preserved in the
Mary Lea Shane Archive of the University of California
Santa Cruz's Special Collections, but many important artifacts pertaining to the
observatory's scientific life, remain on the mountain.
The Historical Collections Project was begun in late 2008 to preserve those artifacts
and make them accessible.
Cataloging the collection of Scientific Objects—the hardware used in all types of
observatory work, including complete instruments, separate components, measuring devices, photographic
apparata, and so on—is the Project's first goal. Cataloging is ongoing and many items
remain to be recorded. Those that have been can be found on this website using the search
and browse tools. New items become available as soon as they are added.
The Project is also concerned with two other collections, distinct from but related to
the scientific objects. These are Publications and Manuscripts, consisting largely of
Lick Observatory publications and the handwritten log books of
Lick astronomers, and Photographic Plates, mainly comprising spectrograms and
direct images from all Lick programs, instruments, and telescopes of the photographic
era. A log-book database with nearly 2,000 records was added
early in 2012. Other parts of these collections will become available here as they are cataloged.
See "About" for more on the Historical Collections Project.
top left: Warner & Swasey quartz-prism double-star micrometer, 1885, cat. no. SO001001;
upper right: Kunz-cell photoelectic photometer, ca. 1930, cat. no. SO001034;
lower left: observing book of Edward Emerson Barnard, 1894;
bottom right: Brashear quadruplet lens for the Einstein-effect camera, 1922, cat. no. SO000212.