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A number of Neolithic Sites such as Stonehenge, Salisbury, England (c3100 BC) and Newgrange, Donore, Meath, Ireland (c3300 BC) are known to have been constructed with astronomical events in mind, e.g. Summer and Winter Solstices’. Buildings specifically constructed to make measured astronomical observations began in China some 4000 years ago. A Timeline of the development of Observatories and the Telescopes used in them is given below: Before Common Era (B.C.) 2100 Xiangfen Astronomical Observatory, Xiangfen County, Linfen City, Shanxi Province, China 1100 11th-7th century B.C., Zhou dynasty astronomical observatory (灵台) in today's Xian, China 300 Thirteen Towers solar observatory, Chankillo, Peru 200 206-220 B.C., Han dynasty astronomical observatory (灵台) in Chang'an and Luoyang. During East Han dynasty, astronomical observatory (灵台) built in in Yanshi, Henan Province, China Common Era (A.D.) 600s 632-647 Cheomseongdae, an astronomy build in the reign of Queen Seondeok in Gyeongju, then the capital of Shilla, now in present day South Korea 618-1279 Tang dynasty-Song dynasty, observatories built in Chang'an, Kaifeng, Hangzhou, China 700s 700-77 - The first Zij treatise, Az-Zīj ‛alā Sinī al-‛Arab, written by Ibrahim al-Fazari and Muhammad al-Fazari 700-96 - Brass astrolabe constructed by Muhammad al-Fazari based on Hellenistic sources ca. 777 - Yaqūb ibn Tāriq wrote Az-Zij al-Mahlul min as-Sindhind li-Darajat Daraja based on Brahmagupta and Surya Siddhanta 800s 800-33 - Baghdad observatory in Iraq by Arabic astronomers under al-Mamun 800-50 - Zij al-Sindhind written by Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (Algorismi) 900s 900-29 - Az-Zij as-Sabi written by Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius) 1000s 1000 - Mokattam observatory in Egypt for al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah 1023 - Hamedan observatory in Persia ca. 1030 - Treasury of Optics by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) of Iraq and Egypt 1074-92 - Malikshah observatory at Isfahan used by Omar Khayyám 1086 - Northern Song dynasty astronomical observatory 1100s 1114–87 - Tables of Toledo based on Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel) published by Gerard of Cremona 1115-16 - Sinjaric Tables written by al-Khazini 1119-25 - Cairo al-Bataihi observatory for Al-Afdal Shahanshah cs. 1020 - Geared mechanical astrolabe invented by Ibn Samh 1200s 1252-72 - Alfonsine tables recorded 1259 - Maragheh observatory and library of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi by Mangu under Hulagu Khan ca. 1270 - Terrace for Managing Heaven 26 observatory network of Guo Shoujing under Khubilai Khan 1272 - Zij-i Ilkhani written by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi 1276 - Dengfeng Star Observatory Platform, Gaocheng, Dengfeng City, Henan Province, China 1400s 1400-29 - Khaqani Zij by Jamshīd al-Kāshī 1417 - Speculum Planetarum by Simones de Selandia 1420 - Samarkand observatory of Ulugh Beg 1437 - Zij-i-Sultani written by Ulugh Beg 1442 - Beijing Ancient Observatory 1467-71 - Observatory at Oradea, Hungary for Matthias Corvinus 1472 - Nuremberg observatory 1500s 1540 Apian "Astronomicum Caesareum" 1560 - Kassel observatory under Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hesse 1575-80 - Istanbul observatory of al-Din under Sultan Murad III 1576 - Royal Danish Astronomical Observatory Uraniborg at Hven by Tycho Brahe 1577 - Istanbul observatory of al-Din by Taqi al-Din 1577-80 - Unbored Pearl by Taqi al-Din 1581 - Royal Danish Astronomical Observatory Stjerneborg at Hven by Tycho Brahe 1600s 1600 - Prague observatory in Benátky nad Jizerou by Tycho Brahe 1603 - Johann Bayer's Uranometria 1608 - Hans Lippershey tries to patent an optical refracting telescope, the first recorded functional telescope 1609 - Galileo Galilei builds his first optical refracting telescope 1616 - Niccolò Zucchi experiments with a reflecting telescope 1633 - Construction of Leiden University Observatory 1641 - William Gascoigne invents telescope cross hairs 1641 - Danzig/Gdansk observatory of Jan Hevelius 1642 - Copenhagen University Royal observatory 1661 - James Gregory proposes an optical reflecting telescope with parabolic mirrors 1667 - Paris Observatory 1669 - Isaac Newton constructs the first "pratical" reflecting telescope, the Newtonian telescope 1672 - Laurent Cassegrain designs the Cassegrain telescope 1675 - Royal Greenwich Observatory of England 1684 - Christiaan Huygens publishes "Astroscopia Compendiaria" in which he described the design of very long aerial telescopes 1700s 1704 - First observatory at Cambridge University (based at Trinity College) 1724 - Indian observatory of Sawai Jai Singh at Delhi 1725 - St. Petersburg observatory at Royal Academy 1732 - Indian observatories of Sawai Jai Singh at Varanasi, Ujjain, Mathura, Madras 1733 - Chester Moor Hall invents the achromatic lens refracting telescope 1734 - Indian observatory of Sawai Jai Singh at Jaipur 1753 - Real Observatorio de Cádiz (Spain) 1753 - Vilnius observatory at Vilnius University, Lithuania 1758 - John Dollond reinvents the achromatic lens 1761 - Joseph-Nicolas Delisle 62 observing station network for observing the transit of Venus 1769 - Short reflectors used at 63 station network for transit of Venus 1780 - Florence Specola observatory 1789 - William Herschel finishes a 49-inch (1.2 m) optical reflecting telescope, located in Slough, England 1798 - Real Observatorio de la Isla de Léon (actualmente Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada) (Spain) 1800s 1840 - John William Draper invents astronomical photography and photographs the Moon 1845 - Lord Rosse finishes the Birr Castle 72-inch (1.8 m) optical reflecting telescope, located in Parsonstown, Ireland 1849 - Santiago observatory set up by USA, later becomes Chilean National 1859 - Kirchoff and Bunsen develop spectroscopy 1864 - Herschel's so-called GC (General Catalogue) of nebulae and star clusters published 1868 - Janssen and Lockyer discover Helium observing spectra of Sun 1871 - German Astronomical Association organized network of 13 (later 16) observatories for stellar proper motion studies 1872 - Henry Draper invents astronomical spectral photography and photographs the spectrum of Vega 1878 - Dreyer published a supplement to the GC of about 1000 new objects, the New General Catalogue 1887 - Paris conference institutes Carte du Ciel project to map entire sky to 14th magnitude photographically 1888 - First light of 91cm refracting telescope at Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton near San Jose, California 1889 - Astronomical Society of the Pacific founded 1890 - Albert Michelson proposes the stellar interferometer 1892 - George Ellery Hale finishes a spectroheliograph, which allows the Sun to be photographed in the light of one element only 1897 - Alvan Clark finishes the Yerkes 40-inch (1.0 m) optical refracting telescope, located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin 1900s 1902 - Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, Canada established 1904 - Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington founded 1910s 1917 - Mount Wilson 100-inch (2.5 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Mount Wilson, California 1918 - 1.8m Plaskett Telescope begins operation at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada 1919 - International Astronomical Union (IAU) founded 1930s 1930 - Bernard-Ferdinand Lyot invents the coronagraph 1930 - Karl Jansky builds a 30-meter long rotating aerial radio telescope 1933 - Bernard-Ferdinand Lyot invents the Lyot filter 1934 - Bernhard Schmidt finishes the first 14-inch (360 mm) Schmidt optical reflecting telescope 1936 - Palomar 18-inch (460 mm) Schmidt optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Palomar, California 1937 - Grote Reber builds a 31-foot (9.4 m) radio telescope 1940s 1941 - Dmitri Maksutov invents the Maksutov telescope which is adopted by major observatories in the Soviet Union and internationally. It is now also a popular design with amateur astronomers 1946 - Martin Ryle and his group perform the first astronomical observations with a radio interferometer 1947 - Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 218-foot (66 m) non-steerable radio telescope 1949 - Palomar 48-inch (1.2 m) Schmidt optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Palomar, California 1949 - Palomar 200-inch (5.1 m) optical reflecting telescope (Hale telescope) begins regular operation, located in Palomar, California 1950s 1953 - Luoxue Mountain Cosmic Rays Research Center, Yunnan Province, in China founded 1954 - Earth rotation aperture synthesis suggested (see e.g. Christiansen and Warburton (1955)) 1956 - Dwingeloo Radio Observatory 25 m telescope completed, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands 1957 - Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 250-foot (75 m) steerable radio telescope (the Lovell Telescope) 1957 - Peter Scheuer publishes his P(D) method for obtaining source counts of spatially unresolved sources 1959 - Radio Observatory of the University of Chile, located at Maipú, Chile founded 1959 - The 3C catalogue of radio sources is published (revised in 1962) 1959 - The Shane 120-inch (3.0 m) Telescope Opened at Lick Observatory 1960s 1960 - Owens Valley 27-meter radio telescopes begin operation, located in Big Pine, California 1961 - Parkes 64-metre radio telescope begins operation, located near Parkes, Australia 1962 - European Southern Observatory (ESO) founded 1962 - Kitt Peak solar observatory founded 1962 - Green Bank, West Virginia 90m radio telescope 1962 - Orbiting Solar Observatory 1 satellite launched 1963 - Arecibo 300-meter radio telescope begins operation, located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico 1964 - Martin Ryle's 1-mile (1.6 km) radio interferometer begins operation, located in Cambridge, England 1965 - Owens Valley 40-meter radio telescope begins operation, located in Big Pine, California 1967 - First VLBI images, with 183 km baseline 1969 - Observations start at Big Bear Solar Observatory, located in Big Bear, California 1969 - Las Campanas Observatory 1970s 1970 - Cerro Tololo 158-inch (4.0 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Cerro Tololo, Chile 1970 - Kitt Peak National Observatory 158-inch (4.0 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located near Tucson, Arizona 1970 - Uhuru x-ray telescope satellite 1970 - Antoine Labeyrie performs the first high-resolution optical speckle interferometry observations 1970 - Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope completed, near Westerbork, The Netherlands 1972 - 100 m Effelsberg radio telescope inaugurated (Germany) 1973 - UK Schmidt Telescope 1.2 metre optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Anglo-Australian Observatory near Coonabarabran, Australia 1974 - Anglo-Australian Telescope 153-inch (3.9 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Anglo-Australian Observatory near Coonabarabran, Australia 1975 - Gerald Smith, Frederick Landauer, and James Janesick use a CCD to observe Uranus, the first astronomical CCD observation 1975 - Antoine Labeyrie builds the first two-telescope optical interferometer 1976 - The 6-m BTA-6 (Bolshoi Teleskop Azimutalnyi or "Large Altazimuth Telescope") goes into operation on Mt. Pashtukhov in the Russian Caucasus 1978 - Multiple Mirror 176-inch (4.5 m) equivalent optical/infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Amado, Arizona 1978 - International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) telescope satellite 1978 - Einstein High Energy Astronomy Observatory x-ray telescope satellite 1979 - UKIRT 150-inch (3.8 m) infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii 1979 - Canada-France-Hawaii 140-inch (3.6 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii 1979 - NASA Infrared Telescope Facility 120-inch (3.0 m) infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii 1980s 1980 - Completion of construction of the VLA, located in Socorro, New Mexico 1983 - Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) telescope 1984 - IRAM 30-m telescope at Pico Veleta near Granada, Spain completed 1987 - 15-m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope UK submillimetre telescope installed at Mauna Kea Observatory 1987 - 5-m Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) installed at the ESO La Silla Observatory 1988 - Australia Telescope Compact Array aperture synthesis radio telescope begins operation, located near Narrabri, Australia 1989 - Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite 1990s 1990 - Hubble 2.4m space Telescope launched, mirror found to be flawed 1991 - Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite 1993 - Keck 10-meter optical/infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii 1993 - Very Long Baseline Array of 10 dishes 1995 - Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST) -- the first very high resolution optical astronomical images (from aperture synthesis observations) 1995 - Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope of thirty 45 m dishes at Pune 1996 - Keck 2 10-meter optical/infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii 1997 - The Japanese HALCA satellite begins operations, producing first VLBI observations from space, 25,000 km maximum baseline 1998 - First light at VLT1, the 8.2 m ESO telescope 2000s 2001 - First light at the Keck Interferometer. Single-baseline operations begin in the near-infrared. 2001 - First light at VLTI interferometry array. Operations on the interferometer start with single-baseline near-infrared observations with the 103 m baseline. 2005 - First imaging with the VLTI using the AMBER optical aperture synthesis instrument and three VLT telescopes. 2005 - First light at SALT, the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, with a primary mirror diameter of 11 meters. 2006 - Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC); 10.4 m 410″ Reflector – Segmented (36); World’s largest as of 2009; ORM, Canary Islands, Spain. Royal Greenwich Observatory Meudon Observatory (All Observatories) Allegheny Observatory Berlin Observatory Cincinnati Observatory Harvard College Observatory Keck Observatory Lick Observatory Mount Palomar Observatory Mount Wilson Observatory Not Known Paris Observatory Potsdam Observatory Pulkovo Observatory Royal Greenwich Observatory United States Naval Observatory Yerkes Observatory (All Locations) Berlin, Germany Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Chicago, Illinois, USA Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Greenwich, London, England Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA Meudon, Paris, France Mount Hamilton, California, USA Mount Palomar, California, USA Mount Wilson, California, USA Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Potsdam, Germany Saint Petersburg, Russia Washington DC, USA Image Observatory Location Date Designer Details Allegheny Observatory Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA 1859 (Northside Hill); 1912 (Riverside Park) Thornsten E. Billquist (present observatory) More... Berlin Observatory Berlin, Germany 1711 (at Babelsburg from 1913) Gottfried Kirch More... Cincinnati Observatory Cincinnati, Ohio, USA 1843 (Mount Adams); Mount Lookout (1873) Samuel Hannaford and Sons (present Observatory) More... Harvard College Observatory Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 1839 William Cranch Bond More... Keck Observatory Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA 1993 (Keck I); 1996 (Keck II) California Association for Research in Astronomy More... Lick Observatory Mount Hamilton, California, USA 1876-1887 Richard S Floyd, Thomas Fraser & Simon Newcomb More... Mount Palomar Observatory Mount Palomar, California, USA 1936 Russell W Porter More... Mount Wilson Observatory Mount Wilson, California, USA 1904 George Ellery Hale More... Paris Observatory Meudon, Paris, France 1667 (at Meudon from 1876) Claude Perrault More... Potsdam Observatory Potsdam, Germany 1876 Wilhelm Julius Foerster More... Pulkovo Observatory Saint Petersburg, Russia 1835 Alexander Bryullov & A. V. Shchusev More... Royal Greenwich Observatory Greenwich, London, England 1675 Sir Christopher Wren More... United States Naval Observatory Washington DC, USA 1844 (23rd & E Street Site), 1893 (34th Street) Richard Morris Hunt (1893) More... Yerkes Observatory Chicago, Illinois, USA 1897 Henry Ives Cobb, George Ellery Hale More...