The Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, located on Observatory Hill, in Saanich, British Columbia, was completed in 1918 by the Canadian government. The Dominion Architect responsible for the building was Edgar Lewis Horwood Proposed and designed by John S. Plaskett in 1910 with the support of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research, when the 72-inch aperture telescope was constructed, it was planned to be the largest telescope in the world but delays meant it saw first light after the Hooker 100-inch telescope.
The observatory has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada as it is a world-renowned facility where many discoveries about the nature of the Milky Way were made, and it was one of the world’s main astrophysical research centres until the 1960s.
Read more about Dominion Astrophysical Observatory: Centre of The Universe, Telescope Construction, Use, Plaskett Telescope Contemporaries On Commissioning
Famous quotes containing the words dominion and/or observatory:
“Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the power of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)