‘Lights Out’
What’s all this drivel in your editorial (Dec. 18), “Lights Out,” about elaborate precautions to be taken to preserve the operational integrity of the Mount Palomar telescope?
Turn out the lights, mandate a billboard blackout and install low-sodium lamps? Nonsense! Within 10 years, probably much sooner if our accelerated space programs are an indicator, we will be making astronomical observations with telescopes mounted in shuttles or other space apparatus with a thousand times the clarity and exploration potential at a fraction of the cost of existing methods. After all, you can ask an earthbound telescope to penetrate only so much smog, and I don’t think turning off a few billboard lights is going to help all that much.
K.P. ANDERSON
Lakewood
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