Observatories
Ground-based facilities that study the sky.
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2- Observatory
ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array)
ALMA is an international radio observatory of millimeter and submillimeter antennas located on the Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
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Arecibo Observatory
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico operated a 305-metre radio dish — for decades the largest single-dish radio telescope — until its collapse in 2020.
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3- Observatory
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile is a NOIRLab site whose telescopes carried out the Dark Energy Survey.
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Cherenkov Telescope Array
The next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high-energy gamma rays, an array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes being built across two sites — one in the northern hemisphere on La Palma and one in the southern hemisphere in Chile — to catch the faint blue flashes that gamma rays make in the atmosphere. The largest such observatory ever built.
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Cosmic Explorer
A proposed United States third-generation gravitational-wave observatory with arms up to forty kilometres long — a scaled-up successor to LIGO that, with the Einstein Telescope, would open the distant gravitational-wave universe.
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3- Observatory
Gemini Observatory
A pair of 8.1-metre optical/infrared telescopes, one in Hawaii and one in Chile, giving coverage of both hemispheres.
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GEO600
A German–British gravitational-wave detector near Hannover with 600-metre arms. Smaller than LIGO or Virgo, it works as a technology testbed — pioneering the squeezed-light and other techniques the larger detectors adopt — and observes as part of the international network.
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Green Bank Telescope
The world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, a 100-metre dish in Green Bank, West Virginia.
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1L
3- Observatory
La Silla Observatory
La Silla was ESO's first observatory, a pioneering site on the edge of the Atacama Desert still productive in exoplanet and survey science.
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LIGO Hanford
LIGO Hanford in Washington State is one of the two US Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory detectors that made the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015.
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LIGO Livingston
LIGO Livingston in Louisiana is the second US LIGO detector; together with LIGO Hanford it detected the first gravitational waves from merging black holes.
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2- Observatory
Mauna Kea Observatories
The Mauna Kea Observatories are a collection of independent astronomical research facilities located near the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii.
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Mount Wilson Observatory
Mount Wilson Observatory in California is where Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope.
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2- Observatory
Palomar Observatory
Palomar Observatory is an astronomical observatory in California, home to the historic 200-inch Hale Telescope.
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Paranal Observatory
ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert is home to the Very Large Telescope, one of the most productive ground-based facilities in astronomy.
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1V
4- Observatory
Vera C. Rubin Observatory
An optical survey observatory in Chile conducting the wide, fast, deep Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
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Very Large Array
The Very Large Array is a radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico consisting of 27 movable parabolic antennas arranged in a Y-shaped configuration.
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Very Large Telescope (VLT)
ESO's optical/infrared array of four 8.2-metre telescopes at Cerro Paranal in Chile's Atacama Desert.
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Virgo
Virgo is a European gravitational-wave detector near Pisa, Italy, that observes together with LIGO to localise sources on the sky.