Cincinnati Observatory: Where American Astronomy Was Born

Astronomer Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel lectured so compellingly about the night sky that Cincinnati residents funded an entire observatory to keep him working. Mitchel traveled to Munich in eighteen forty-two to purchase the optical elements for what was then the second-largest refracting telescope in the world. On November ninth, eighteen forty-three, former president John Quincy Adams laid the cornerstone on a hill that still bears his name, Mount Adams.

The observatory opened in eighteen forty-five as the first public observatory in the Western Hemisphere. The telescope Mitchel brought from Bavaria remains in working order today, the oldest telescope in continuous use in the United States. The hill is still called Mount Adams, but the observatory moved to Mount Lookout in eighteen seventy-three, where it still offers public viewing nights to this day.