Exploding telescopes!!
Oops! Crap! This was supposed to go in MPSIMS… Mods? Help?
Igor stepped on my foot!
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Th’ ol’ “link in the smilie” trick, huh? I’m going to have to keep my eye on you, lad.
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My dad is a retired research chemist, worked with peptides. He had just one seroius mishap over some 30-plus years of lab work, that was when a test tube exploded in his face.
There are two realistic things an astronomer needs to fear: 1) Tripping over things in the dark and 2) Improper use of solar filters.
However, I have plenty of unrealistic things to worry about.
I’m afraid of heights. It terrifies me to walk on those floors that are an open gridwork so you can see through them. So if I have to climb into a VLA antenna or walk on the catwalk out at Palomar, I get sweaty palms and my heart races. Luckily, these are usually non-manditory sight-seeing activities . . . but I feel like I have to do them or the other astronomers will make fun of me. 
I also have an irrational fear of being clocked by the 200’’ when I’m in the dome and all the lights are off. Doesn’t matter if I’m in one of the clearly-marked the safe areas. It just ain’t right that something that freakin’ big moves so quietly.
Redgarding the OP, I still think a tourist with a flash camera was to blame. 
Let me add one: having a nice couple bring their 4-year-old son into the observatory to show him Halley’s Comet through the telescope “because he’ll be able to see it twice in his life! Once now, and once when he’s 79…”
The setting circles on the scope (an 8 inch refractor) were broken at the time, and the comet was still a bit outside the orbit of Saturn, so hadn’t grown an appreciable tail yet… I looked and looked by star-hopping, but COULDN’T find it!
I did what any self-respecting student observer would do: I centered a star in the feild, unfocused it a bit to make it blurry, and lied my ass off! (I’m going to hell, I just know it!)
no, no, no, astroboy! don’t think of it as “going to hell”, think of it as “going to sinner’s heaven”! 
Thought of another rational fear: getting mashed by a dome. I hear this happend to a guy at Keck this week. He somehow got caught between the opened door on the moving dome and an unmoving part of the dome. Can’t find any confirmation of this, but, then, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you do a press release about.
Astroboy, ye did the best ye could. 
Astroboy14, in addition to irreparably damaging my trust in astronomers ;), you’ve confused me. If this was before Halley’s comet developed a tail, then couldn’t they just wait until it got nearer to the Earth and they could see it with everyone else? Or would the comet not have been visible from their home (too far north)?