Tour and Observing Evening at Lick Observatory

Astronomy and astrophysics are great ways to catch the attention of the general public and practicing physicists alike. We have offered a tour and observing evening as part of summer schools at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the 10th Conference on Atomic Spectra and Oscillator Strengths (ASOS 10) hosted by U.C. Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. At ASOS, the Lick tour was offered in parallel to a trip to Muir Woods and Fisherman’s Wharf, and half the participants chose to go to Lick, even though we were scheduled return well after 1 am. These excursions have been big successes, and participants often told us it was one of the highlights of their participation, both at the conference and at the summer schools. In this talk we describe our experiences on the tours and observing through the world’s second-largest refracting telescope, the Great Lick Refractor, which was the largest and best telescope in existence when it was built. Each tour is different, but focuses on the telescope facilities, history of the observatory, and its scientific advances.