Mount Wilson

Searing temperatures on dense mountain snow have spurred snowfall in the San Gabriel Mountains, and not the pretty kind. Two avalanches, one of them 50 yards wide and several feet deep, slid down the middle of Baldy Bowl, a spot north of Claremont frequented by backcountry skiers and snowboarders. No one was hurt. The slides, which occurred Saturday, appear to have been triggered by human activity, according to reports from Sierra Club ski mountaineers.

* The actor plays Gus, the catcher in the film "For Love of the Game," which opens Friday. After Work . . .: I'd go to dinner at Nettie's or Michelangelo, a new Italian restaurant nearby in Silver Lake, and check out a show at the Actors' Gang theater. They've always got good stuff going on, but if there's nothing there, I like the Troubadour. That's my favorite place to see music, just because of the intimate feel and all the '70s-style wood.

Ho-ho-hoedown? Just in time for Christmas, Southern California country music fans once again will have a place to turn on the radio dial as sister stations KKGO-AM (1260) and XSURF-AM (540) start simulcasting twangy music across the region on Dec. 1. The independent stations, operated by the owner of classical station KMZT-FM (105.1), will tap some on-air personalities from KZLA-FM (93.9), which abandoned country in October for a contemporary pop-R&B format.

Nowadays Big Science requires Big Money. Recognizing that fact, the W. M. Keck Foundation has come up with a $70-million gift to Caltech to build the world's largest optical telescope, a 10-meter (400-inch) instrument that will enable astronomers to peer farther into the universe and further back in time than ever before. Because the universe is expanding, the farther away an object is, the longer ago it was created.

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, who played a key role in developing NASA's program of lunar and solar system exploration but was much better known as a television commentator who explained space science in clear and understandable language, died Feb. 8 at his home in Arlington, Va., from complications of pneumonia. He was 82.

Conceived by the American astronomer George Ellery Hale and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, construction of the Palomar Observatory was completed in 1948. 40 miles northeast of the city of San Diego, at an altitude of 5,660 feet above sea level, Palomar's reflecting telescope (with its 200-inch primary mirror) was the world's largest until 1974 when the Soviet Union constructed the 236-inch UTR-Z at Zelenchyukskaya, U.S.S.R.

A small plane, with its stricken pilot slumped over the controls apparently unconscious, ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean today after flying for four hours and hundreds of miles on autopilot. Astonished rescuers said the man swam toward them and was pulled alive from the water. The pilot, identified as a Washington, D.C., lawyer, was taken by helicopter to Nassau, the Bahamas, and was to be flown by jet to Florida, the Coast Guard said.

It literally means "house of the oaks," but make no mistake: Casa de los Robles is a house of details. Including stenciled beams in the dining room and a tiled ceiling in the kitchen, this three-story Spanish Colonial Revival in San Marino contains one intricate detail after another that, together, make the home a painstakingly crafted work of art. Casa de los Robles gets its name from the 70 oak trees lining the property. The 2 acres of grounds are reminiscent of a private park: tranquil and shady and containing two ponds, five fountains and gardens designed so that something is always in bloom.