Big Bear Lake, a woodsy California town tucked within the San Bernardino Mountains, is known at once for its ski resorts and for its tranquil namesake lake. But while standing on the shoreline or taking a lackadaisical boat ride on the water, you might notice an unusual structure on the lake's less-developed north side that sticks out amid the cozy alpine lodge aesthetic. Standing alone on an artificial island and peering over the lake, the large white structure with a rounded top looks almost like a giant misplaced gumball machine.

The building in question is not a boathouse. Nor is it an architectural oddity someone coughed up for. It's a solar observatory -- where astronomers look out and study the happenings of the sun rather than the night sky. It also happens to be home to one of the world's largest solar telescopes.

The Big Bear Solar Observatory might seem like a surprising presence, almost hovering out there over the calm waters, but the reason this facility is in a small Southern California town a couple of hours east of Los Angeles has a lot to do with the weather.

In the late 1960s, CalTech was looking for a place to build a solar observatory. The famously selective institution conducted a site survey throughout various Southern California enclaves in search of a place that had steady sky conditions. Eventually, it settled on Big Bear Lake, a town bearing clear skies for much of the year.

The lake itself also became a way to solve a common problem that cropped up during solar work: When the sun heats up the ground, convection currents above the ground run the risk of distorting the images, says Dr. John Varsik, a data scientist at the observatory who's worked there since 1988. "One way to reduce that is if you build out on a lake like this, then the water has what we call high heat capacity, which means it tends to stay cooler than the air during the day," he says. "And so you get a lot less convection currents above the water."

The facility, which cost $600,000 to build, was revolutionary in that it could make three separate observations of the sun at the same time, reported the Big Bear Grizzly on the heels of its May 3, 1970, dedication. Over the past several decades, the building has seen more modern telescopes come into the fold, including its current telescope, introduced in 2008, which was too large to fit in the old structure -- hence the unusual shape of the building's dome, which helps protect it against the elements. In the ensuing years, the building has also become more accessible to scientists: When it first opened in 1970, the Big Bear Solar Observatory was reachable only by boat.

The field of solar observation remains relatively small, with only a few hundred people in the world who study the sun, Dr. Varsik says. "It's a somewhat specialized field," he said. "We're dealing with one object. And the problems that we're dealing with are slightly different. ... We're not dealing with cosmology or the large-scale structure of the universe or things like that."

Within this niche occupation, the Big Bear Solar Observatory, which is run these days by the New Jersey Institute of Technology, remains an important presence. In particular, its leading solar flare studies are helping the scientific community further understand "Sun and space weather effects," according to an NJIT news release. Last year, the research team at NJIT received a grant of $4.64 million for the observatory to keep researching the sun's "explosive activity."

The solar observatory has been temporarily shut since Sept.10 due to the Line Fire in the area, according to its website. While it's not usually open to curious onlookers, the facility does offer tours every so often. If you happen to be around one of the few days it's open, you can see the unique building that's dedicated to further understanding the mysteries of the sun.