Yerkes Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, United States. The observatory was operated by the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from its founding in 1897 to 2018. Ownership was transferred to the non-profit Yerkes Future Foundation (YFF) in May 2020, which began restoration and renovation of the historic building and grounds. Re-opening for public tours and programming began May 27, 2022.
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by the University of California Observatories, with headquarters on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, where its scientific staff moved in the mid-1960s. It is named after James Lick.
The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a 1,740-meter (5,710-foot) peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles.
The Apache Point Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in the Sacramento Mountains in Sunspot, New Mexico, United States, approximately 18 miles (29 km) south of Cloudcroft. The observatory is operated by New Mexico State University (NMSU) and owned by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC). Access to the telescopes and buildings is private and restricted.
George Ellery Hale was an American astrophysicist, best known for his discovery of magnetic fields in sunspots, and as the leader or key figure in the planning or construction of several world-leading telescopes; namely, the 40-inch refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory, 60-inch Hale reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, 100-inch Hooker reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson, and the 200-inch Hale reflecting telescope at Palomar Observatory. He played a key role in the foundation of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research and the National Research Council, and in developing the California Institute of Technology into a leading research university.
The Hale Telescope is a 200-inch (5.1 m), f/3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, design, and construction of the observatory, but with the project ending up taking 20 years he did not live to see its commissioning. The Hale was groundbreaking for its time, with double the diameter of the second-largest telescope, and pioneered many new technologies in telescope mount design and in the design and fabrication of its large aluminum coated "honeycomb" low thermal expansion Pyrex mirror. It was completed in 1949 and is still in active use.
Mount Wilson is a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, located within the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles County, California. With only minor topographical prominence the peak is not naturally noticeable from a distance, although it is easily identifiable due to the large number of antennas near its summit. It is a subsidiary peak of nearby San Gabriel Peak.
The Otto Struve Telescope was the first major telescope to be built at McDonald Observatory. Located in the Davis Mountains in West Texas, the Otto Struve Telescope was designed by Warner & Swasey Company and constructed between 1933 and 1939 by the Paterson-Leitch Company. Its 82-inch (2.1 m) mirror was the second largest in the world at the time. It was named after the Russian-American astronomer Otto Struve in 1966, three years after his death; Struve had been the director of McDonald Observatory from 1932–1950.
The Carnegie telescope is a twin 20-inch (510 mm) refractor telescope located at Lick Observatory in California, United States. The double telescope's construction began in the 1930s with a grant from the Carnegie institution, although it was not completed until the 1960s when a second lens was added. The telescope is not designed for visual observation, rather it has two lenses used for taking photographs for a specific wavelength recorded on a film emulsion. It was used for photographic sky surveys in the late 20th century, which were successfully completed.
The Crossley telescope is a 36-inch (910 mm) reflecting telescope located at Lick Observatory in the U.S. state of California. It was used between 1895 to 2010, and was donated to the observatory by Edward Crossley, its namesake.
The Kenwood Astrophysical Observatory was the personal observatory of George Ellery Hale, constructed by his father, William E. Hale, in 1890 at the family home in the Kenwood section of Chicago. It was here that the spectroheliograph, which Hale had invented while attending MIT, was first put to practical use; and it was here that Hale established the Astrophysical Journal. Kenwood's principal instrument was a twelve-inch refractor, which was used in conjunction with a Rowland grating as part of the spectroheliograph. Hale hired Ferdinand Ellerman as an assistant; years later, the two would work together again at the Mount Wilson Observatory.
Nicholas Ulrich Mayall was an American observational astronomer. After obtaining his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, Mayall worked at the Lick Observatory, where he remained from 1934 to 1960, except for a brief period at MIT's Radiation Laboratory during World War II.
Solar observation is the scientific endeavor of studying the Sun and its behavior and relation to the Earth and the remainder of the Solar System. Deliberate solar observation began thousands of years ago. That initial era of direct observation gave way to telescopes in the 1600s followed by satellites in the twentieth century.
William Pendry Bidelman was an American astronomer. Born in Los Angeles, and raised in North Dakota, he was noted for classifying the spectra of stars, and considered a pioneer in recognizing and classifying sub-groups of the peculiar stars.
Hannah Steele Pettit, also known as Hannah Bard Steele Pettit, was an American astronomer who spent a notable amount of her career working as an assistant at the Yerkes Observatory, where she and her husband Edison Pettit jointly published photographs on the corona of a solar eclipse.
Alice Hall Farnsworth was an American astronomer. She was director of John Payson Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College from 1936 until her retirement in 1957.
Yerkes 41-inch reflector is a 40-inch aperture (101.6 cm) reflecting telescope at the Yerkes Observatory, that was completed in 1968. It is known as the 41 inch to avoid confusion with a 40 inch refractor at the observatory. Optically it is a Ritchey–Chrétien design, and the main mirror uses low expansion glass. The telescope was used as a testbed for an adaptive optics system in the 1990s.
Cora Gertrude Burwell was an American astronomical researcher specialized in stellar spectroscopy. She was based at Mount Wilson Observatory from 1907 to 1949.
The Observatorio Manuel Foster, or Manuel Foster Observatory, is an astronomical observatory constructed on Cerro San Cristóbal near Santiago, Chile in 1903. This site was originally known as the D. O. Mills Observatory after the philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills. It was built as an offshoot of the Lick Observatory to observe stars in the southern hemisphere, and, under the direction of the American astronomer W. W. Campbell, was used in an extensive project to determine the apex of the Sun's motion through space.
Ferdinand Ellerman was an American astronomer and photographer. He spent a good part of his career as an associate of the solar astronomer George E. Hale, and is known for his study of a phenomenon in the solar chromosphere later dubbed Ellerman bombs.
