OTD In Space - December 20: Mount Wilson Observatory Founded

On Dec. 20, 1904, the Mount Wilson Observatory was founded.

This astronomical observatory was the brainchild of the solar astronomer George Ellery Hale. He was a professor at the University of Chicago who was famous for discovering magnetic fields in sunspots. In 1889, two Harvard astronomers started testing out the observing conditions at Mount Wilson, but rain and snow damaged many of their instruments — not to mention the clouds that blocked their view of the stars. They gave up on building the telescope, but they had already ordered the glass for the lens, so they gave it to Hale. He finished building it in Wisconsin, because he thought Mount Wilson was too far from Chicago. Then he visited Mount Wilson in 1903 and changed his mind when he saw how perfectly clear the sky was. He signed a 99-year lease on the land in June of 1904. On Dec. 20, he received the news that the Carnegie Institution was going to fund the observatory.