By Tanya Ghosh

Sep 1 (IBNS) Saving the Mount Wilson Observatory — where modern astronomy was born — and more than 20 television transmission towers, radio and cellphone antennas, is now in the hands of pilots dropping flame retardant in the area.

The Station Fire continues to soar, moving faster than 15 mph with 100-foot-tall flames. It’s burning on two sides of Mount Wilson, a half-mile to the north and about a mile southwest, fire officials say.

“Right now, the fire is boss,” Larry Peabody of the U.S. Forest Service has said.

The observatory’s Towercam is still transmitting images. The latest show “plenty of smoke but no flames — a comforting sign,” director Hal McAlister wrote in the most recent post on the observatory’s blog.

The observatory, which opened in 1904, houses two giant telescopes and several multimillion-dollar university programs. Edwin Hubble — namesake of the famous space telescope — conducted his pioneering work there.

Firefighters have spent two days cutting fire lines around the most vulnerable structures in the complex and cutting low-hanging tree limbs, sources said.

“If the fire should impact the complex, we will have to let it pass through and come back later,” sources said, adding many of the structures in the Mt. Wilson complex are made of steel and concrete, built with fire protection in mind.