On Telescope, UCOP Decides That If You Can't Lick 'Em, You Have to Join 'Em

Lick 'em

We have followed, on and off, on this blog the case of the Lick Telescope - a concern to our stellar colleagues at Berkeley - which UCOP wanted to de-fund.  The result was an outcry against de-funding.  Now that decision appears to have been reversed.

The UC Office of the President revoked stipulations that withdrew all public funding to Lick Observatory by 2018, re-establishing UC support for the university-owned observatory located on Mount Hamilton.  In a letter, the university leaves it to the UC Observatories director, with assistance from the UCO advisory committee and others, to determine the distribution of public funds — currently $5 million per year — between Lick Observatory and other entities such as Keck Observatory and Thirty Meter Telescope. Last September, the university mandated that Lick become self-supporting, requiring that its funding come from alternative sources. The intention was to reallocate UC funds to higher-priority, cutting-edge facilities such as the Thirty Meter Telescope, a telescope scheduled to open in 2021 that will become the most powerful in the world...

Full story at http://www.dailycal.org/2014/11/03/university-overturned-decision-withdraw-funding-lick-observatory/

In honor of the decision to save an old instrument, how about the 1962 Telstar song about another old instrument?  Suitably, the most popular version of the song was instrumental.


And for those who don't know what Telstar was: