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Changing the Guard: Ellis Gives Kulkarni Key to the Observatory
January 19, 2006
 Richard Ellis, director of Caltech Optical Observatories since 2000 and the Steele Family Professor of Astronomy, has stepped down from his duties as director to devote more time to observational cosmology and to planning the Thirty Meter Telescope. Shri Kulkarni, the MacArthur Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science, was recently named the new director and Ellis "passed the key" to Kulkarni in an informal ceremony on the Caltech campus Friday, January 13.Ellis was also feted on January 4th with a going-away party at Palomar Observatory attended by about 60 people. The event included lunch and a Palomar slide show at the restored Visitor Center, and tours of the recent enhancements that have occurred at the observatory under Ellis's direction. For decades, Palomar Observatory was the premier optical observatory because of its 200-inch Hale Telescope. Though now dwarfed by the 10-meter Keck Telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the Palomar facilities remain at the forefront because of new instruments including the Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics system at the 200-inch. The 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope has a new lease on life with one of the largest CCD cameras (built by our Yale collaborators) and the 60-inch telescope was robotocized to follow up on brilliant gamma-ray bursts. The Palomar Testbed Interferometer is now conducting the most sensitive wobble search for extrasolar planets. At the ceremony, Ellis announced a new pledge of $1M to further improve the observatory from former planetary astronomer, Eleanor 'Glo' Helin and her husband Ron. Kulkarni added, "It would be a challenge to keep up with the momentum initiated by Ellis. With hard work and continued generosity of donors I hope the Hale 200-inch Telescope will have unparalleled adaptive optics and the Observatory as a whole will become the leading facility to follow up transient objects."
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