Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a research center of the Smithsonian Institution. This institution was created by the congress of the United States in 1846 in order to use the legacy made by English James Smithson in the United States in order to found with Washington an establishment for the development and the dissemination of the information. Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory is very known at the Astronome S to have published in 1966 a Catalog of stars which bears its name (see Catalog SAO).

History

A stammering beginning

Although Smithson did not specify a specific field of research, the president John Quincy Adams requested in 1838 so that part of the funds of this legacy is used to establish a national astronomical observatory, but at this time of other interests prevailed and the institution concentrated in various museums and laboratories. 1890 had to be waited until so that the observatory is founded by Samuel Pierpont Langley, the secretary of the institution. Langley was the first director until his death in 1906. It is especially known as a pioneer of aeronautics but it had a training of astronomer: he invented the Bolomètre, discovered the radiation solar Infrarouge, and was one of the first American scientists to perceive the Astrophysique like a discipline with whole share. Initially, the observatory occupied a small hangar behind the building of Smithsonian Institution and its research was centered on the study of the solar radiation and the solar Constante.

New directions and orientations

In 1907, Charles G. Abbot who was assistant with the SAO since 1895, became the new director. Under its direction, several solar observation stations were established in the United States, in South America and Africa. In 1944, when Abbot taken its retirement, Loyal B. Aldrich became the new director.

In 1955 the SAO moved of Washington with Cambridge, Massachusetts to affiliate themselves with the Harvard College Observatory and to extend its team like her field of research. Fred Whipple, then with the head of the department of astronomy in Harvard, was named director of this new SAO to replace Aldrich which took its retirement. Under its direction, the SAO contributed to the American space program by creating an optical world network of follow-up of satellites. Experiments of astronomical observations in orbit, studies on the Comet S and the Meteorite S, and of research in theoretical astrophysics were also undertaken.

In 1973, the bonds between Smithsonian and Harvard were still tightened and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) was created in Cambridge to coordinate the research activities of the SAO and Harvard College Observatory under only one direction.

Innovations and technological leadership

Currently, the SAO is one of the institutions of the largest astrophysics and most diversified in the world. It initiated the development of observatories in Orbite and large terrestrial telescopes, the use of data processing to solve the astrophysical problems as well as integration of measurements in laboratory, theoretical astrophysics and observations in all the field of the electromagnetic Specter.

Research of the program of CFA, although in relation and complementary, are organized in seven sections: atomic and molecular physics, Astrophysical of high energies, optical and infra-red astronomy, Radioastronomy, physics solar and stellar and astrophysical theoretical. The observational data are collected by rockets, balloons and space engines like by telescopes on the ground: Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, the Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts and the millimetre-length radio telescope in Cambridge.

See too

Catalog SAO

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