The Willard lens

The six-inch Willard lens was purchased by the observatory from a San Francisco portrait photographer in the early 1890s, after Director E. S. Holden saw images made with it at the 1889 total eclipse of the sun. After refiguring by Pennsylvania optician and instrument maker John Brashear, E. E. Barnard made it the objective lens of a wide-field camera with which he obtained his epochal series of photographs of the Milky Way and comets.

In its first incarnation, the camera was strapped to a small refracting telescope for guiding during long exposures. Later, San Francisco banker Charles Crocker provided funds for a mounting, after which it became known as the Crocker Photographic Telescope, pictured at right.

The body of the original camera was made of wood and has been lost, but the lens, along with most of the parts of the Crocker mount, have survived. We hope one day to restore this important instrument to its original form.

Lick Historical collections cat. no. SO000209.