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Six Observatories of the Southwest
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hat do a land baron in California, a Boston Brahmin, a steel magnate, an oil tycoon, and a banker all have in common? Each decided to invest some of his wealth to develop a new astronomical observatory in the southwestern United States. Then in the 1950s, the U.S. National Science Foundation created a national observatory that would be open to all astronomers. Through these investments, the United States became the world leader in astronomical research for more than a century. This chapter describes some of the colorful history of the founding of these six observatories. All of them continue to do important research today.
Kitt Peak National Observatory Near Tucson, Arizona On May 7, 1955, the young astronomer Helmut Abt climbed into a two-seater Cessna to survey mountains in the Southwest in order to find a site for a new national astronomy observatory. Up until that time, all observatories in the United States were privately funded, and only astronomers at the universities that operated the telescopes could use them. For convenience, most universities located their observatories on or near their campuses— whether or not the sites were good for astronomy. Abt’s charge was to find the very best site in the United States for the national observatory. Flying was more of an adventure in the 1950s than it is now. Abt’s pilot John Casparis was a Texan who had been flying since before Abt was born. The stories Casparis told about his 33,000 hours of flying experience dated back to World War I. More recently, he said, he made part of his living from the bounty offered in sheep-herding country for killing eagles. His technique was to fly very near the cliffs where the eagles lived, shoot them from his plane, remember where they fell, and then go back later to pick up the carcasses 3
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