Night at the Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory

Latitude Observatory Park

Each night an observer would conduct a series of tasks as they made and recorded their observations; including rotating, aligning, and leveling the telescope, taking numerous readings of stars, weather and other factors.

A typical night at the observatory ...

History and Purpose of the Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory

Latitude Observatory Park

The Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory was constructed in 1899 as one of the original four stations selected by the International Geodetic Association to carry out systematic observations to measure the variations in latitude cause by the Earth's wobble on ...

The Observatory Mound

The form of this mound is unique among all the known Hopewellian mounds. Some 19th century archaeologists thought that the builders had planned to extend a set of parallel walls from the circle, bu thene changed their minds and blocked ...

The Observatory

Latitude Observatory Park

U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Assistant, Edwin Smith or Rockville, Maryland, was assigned to oversee construction and operations at the Gaithersburg Observatory. Original plans for the Ukiah and Gaithersburg Observatories, prepared by the Central Bureau in Germany, specified ...

McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas

Original unit in complex forming one of the great observatory centers of the world. Built in the 1930s under terms of legacy from William Johnson McDonald (1844-1926), a Paris (Texas) banker interested in the stars. A well-educated man, McDonald lived ...

The Cincinnati Observatory

"Lighthouse of the Sky"

Side A:

Prompted by response to his popular lectures, astronomer Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel (1809-1862) founded the Cincinnati Astronomical Society (CAS) in 1842. With CAS funding, Mitchel traveled to Munich, Bavaria, to acquire the optical elements for what became ...

Charles W. Friend House, Observatory, and Weather Station

This is the site of the house and observatory of Nevada’s first weatherman, astronomer, and seismologist, Charles William Friend. Born in Prussia in 1835, Friend immigrated by way of South America to California during the 1849 Gold Rush. In 1867, ...