California firefighters make stand to save famed observatory, homes

Crews fought on Tuesday to defend homes and the famed Mount Wilson Observatory from California's biggest and most dangerous wildfire, standing their ground at a major highway between the flames and populated areas. The Bobcat Fire, which broke out Sept. 6 in the Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles, has already blackened an area larger than the city of Atlanta and its rapid spread prompted worried law enforcement officials to call for new evacuations on Monday evening. Once home to the largest operational telescope in the world, the Mount Wilson Observatory, which sits on a peak of the San Gabriel mountains near vital communications towers, said in an update that almost all the forest around it had burned.

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