Observatories are our windows to the universe. Through their gates, we can move out to distant realms and explore the lives and deaths of stars, the evolution of galaxies, and the origins of the cosmos. Astronomers used to travel to observatories quite regularly to do their work, which made them appreciative of the distant, lovely places where these facilities are built.
Now you don’t have to go to an observatory to get your data as much as in the olden days (or nights, actually), because many facilities are automated and can deliver your data across the Internet (or in digital format on tape or disk) very quickly. We are in the age of remote observing, and it seems to me to be a natural evolutionary step for astronomers to take. Yet, something is lost, something described in Patrick McCray’s book Giant Telescopes as a romantic link to a past time of astronomical discovery when lonely men (they were almost always men) wrestled with great astronomical beasts atop cold mountaintops. Many important discoveries were made by those men and their machines, and their hard work has led directly from the ways of the “old days” to the methods of today’s astronomers.
Still, that shouldn’t stop us from appreciating the beauty of the mountaintops, even as we revel in the rest of the cosmos that is revealed from their observatories. I think every astronomer should go up a mountain at least once in his or her career, and not just for the heady experience of trying to take data at high altitude (although that’s a hoot, too). You gain a new perspective on the world when you go up the mountain. You get to feel as if you could fall up to the stars when you step outside from the control room during an observing run. And, then there’s the rush you get from knowing that the night you’re up there, you’re one of a handful of human beings across the world who are doing what you’re doing.
In that sense, then, observatories are truly gateways to discovery. It’s just that what you discover isn’t always up in the sky!
