Talk:James Lick telescope

Templates added by Samerwyn

 * For the fact template, can someone provide the source of this quote for possible verification purposes down the line?


 * For everything under the rewrite template, if this is a direct quote, it needs to be rewritten into new text and source(s) provided. May I suggest doing this under a heading of "Major discoveries"?

Some food for thought. -- saberwyn 05:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

"Discovery" - pulling this one.
"# The speed of the Solar System in its motion through space has been determined by means of the spectroscope to be 121/2 miles per second." There is no speed of the solar system through space, only in relation to other objects.sinneed (talk) 06:33, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe it refers to the velocity of the solar system in its rotation around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It  is obviously a measurement of the solar system's motion with respect to something, but the 'dumbed down' nontechnical description doesn't specify what.  -- Chetvorno TALK 06:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The 1894 book.
First, I was a little hesitant to edit this, since I'm not an expert on the ways of Wikipedia, and this article is clickable from today's front page. But a little Google searching found the source of the two quotes. I was particularly concerned about the second one, the list of achievements. It sounds way too much like a "puff piece", and, sure enough, it was. There's nothing wrong with that; it's good to include it, but it needed to be identified as contemporary praise rather than modern Wikipedia-grade fact. In particular, the statement that only 20 people outside of the Lick staff have ever seen Amalthea (even restricting it to people that have seen it with their own eyes, looking through a telescope) seems highly doubtful today. The Amalthea page makes no mention of its extraordinary difficulty.

But my citation of the page in Google books may not be correct. Can someone please check this? William Ackerman (talk) 17:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

As for "only 20 people outside of Lick staff have ever seen Amalthea", that probably was true when that particular book was published (1894). Today it's patently false - any astronomer with the skill and equipment to view Pluto can view Amalthea (similar magnitudes and difficulty), and many, many people have viewed Pluto. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.199.219.218 (talk) 12:52, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Major discoveries
I don't know if it is a major discovery but it seems that James Edward Keeler discovered the Encke gap with this telescope. So this should be probably added, shouldn't it? --Buachamer (talk) 11:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Discrepancy
The lede indicates that it is now the third largest, while the Construction section indicates that it is now the second. It seems unlikely that both of these are correct.71.86.140.226 (talk) 18:35, 3 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The "second" claim in the Construction section appears to have now been removed or otherwise cleaned up. A source is needed to support that it is the third largest, as the lede asserts.  N2e (talk) 18:44, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Much history is missing
Do we know who provided the funds for this telescope? Who built it? We see it is named "James Lick... " but the article prose does not explicate the origin story. When conceived? When funded? Time to build from beginning to end? Was the funding source private? From a government source? If private, from many individuals or just one? etc. N2e (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)