Frank Drake

In 1957, I was studying the Pleiades star cluster at Harvard University's radio observatory. On one occasion, we saw an added feature in the data. It turned out to be an amateur radio enthusiast near the observatory, but at the time, I thought we had detected clear evidence of another civilisation.

American Scientist

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

As observatory architect, my dad was partly concerned with the maintenance of them all. I used to go with him on site visits quite often, from age 7 or 8. I have memories of crawling through the rafters of the old building, trying to find where the leak in the roof was.

Irish Scientist

Simon Newcomb

The result was that, if it happened to clear off after a cloudy evening, I frequently arose from my bed at any hour of the night or morning and walked two miles to the observatory to make some observation included in the programme.

Canadian Mathematician

Tim Ferriss

If you start out with a little telescope observing the stars and you keep at it over the years, as I have, it's kind of a dream to one day have an observatory where you can always go and use the telescope conveniently.

American Author

After decades of hauling telescopes around in the back of vans and going up to high altitude locations and so forth, I did finally build an observatory, here on Sonoma mountain.

Robert Crais

There's the Hollywood sign; there's Griffith Observatory; there's the great, amazing Los Angeles Basin. It's 465 square miles of insanity and the best food on the planet.

Nancy Roman

In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

KT Tunstall

My dad's a physicist and had a key to the St Andrew's observatory, and we used to pop down to see Halley's Comet and Saturn and meteor showers.

Scottish Musician

Henry David Thoreau

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

Henry Ward Beecher

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

American Clergyman

Observatories are often for watching celestial bodies, not just any nature scene.

Nature Watching

Observatories have special tools like telescopes; they're not for casual viewing.

Specialized Equipment

Observatories are serious scientific facilities, not places for entertainment.

Study & Research

Some observatories monitor Earth phenomena like wildlife, not just space.

More Than Space

Technical observatories focus on data and research, similar to a laboratory.

Research Facilities

Science observatories might not be open to the public; they're for research.

Not Always Open

 that are as close to the center of the galaxy as possible. Because I want to show there is a mass inside as small a region as possible. So, this means that I want to see a lot of detail. And that's the reason that for this experiment we've used the world's largest telescope. This is the Keck observatory. It hosts two telescopes

Andrea Ghez: The hunt...

 about why I think that the job I have is actually a privilege okay and give you a little bit of the motivation for my getting into this line of work if that's what you call it this thing whoops can we go back hello come in earth there we go alright now this is the Owens Valley radio Observatory behind this

ET is (probably) out...

 upset ancestors you're you're putting your life at risk by going into these places not just because of the the Heights and because of the tight spaces but because of the spirits that live inside of these caves the e keel cave with the zenith passage observatory is just one of a hundred caves Slater and

Maya "Underworld"...

 it was made because of the scientists who built the observatories, who took the data, who made the mistakes and admitted them and then let other scientists build on their mistakes so that they could do what they do and figure out where our place is in the universe.

The secret to scientific...

 to turn our sewers into modern-day health observatories. Their goal is to study opioids within the sewage to better understand consumption in cities. And this data is key, because it really helps cities understand where people are using, how to allocate resources

Big data, small farms...

 to the rustle and the chirp of the cosmos. Our job is to dream up and build new observatories -- a whole new generation of observatories -- on the ground, in space. I mean, what could be more glorious than listening to the Big Bang itself?

What the discovery of...

 telescopes the vast expense of space has been explored and studied so how has the work carried out here and at similar sites helped shape our understanding of space here at the observatory we've made several discoveries including a mewn of

How The Moon Affects Our...

 chamber more than a half-mile these are surface you might ask well who in the right mind would bury an astronomical observatory so far underground those who hunt the most elusive prey on the cosmos the neutrino this enormous array of

Stalking the Wild...

 we started the Financial Crisis Observatory. We had the goal to diagnose in real time financial bubbles and identify in advance their critical time. What is the underpinning, scientifically, of this financial observatory?

Didier Sornette: How we...

 my second favorite tool for addressing these large cosmological questions is the biggest laboratory we know, the universe itself. Observatories with capabilities from visible light