An example of this is Erich Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower, which also illustrates how important these buildings have become for astronomical research. Since then, astronomical observatories have been built in wood, steel and concrete, but almost all of them are dome-shaped to facilitate the operation of the telescope inside. It was built by architect Erich Mendelsohn on the summit of the Potsdam Telegraphenberg to house a solar telescope designed by the astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich Section of the Einstein Tower located in the Albert Einstein Science Park in Potsdam, Germany. In the early 18th century, the work of Isaac Newton and William Herschel led to the invention of the reflector telescope, in which the use of mirrors made it possible to magnify objects millions of times. It represented an important shift in observatory design, not only housing a telescope, but also succeeding in making significant scientific discoveries including the detection of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, Uranus’ fifth moon and Neptune’s second moon, to name a few. Being the world’s first astrophysical observatory built for scientific research, Yerkes astronomical Observatory is considered the birthplace of modern astrophysics. Housed inside a 60 ft long tube on top of a 43 ft high mount and with a 40-inch diameter lens, the Yerkes refractor is still the largest of its kind. The world’s largest refractor telescope is located at Yerkes astronomical observatory, in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, built in 1897. The astronomical observatory closed public operations in 2018. The Yerkes Observatory in 1916, in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, operated by the University of Chicago’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Department. Today, they do not even have to be on Earth. This instrument, which allowed us to look literally into space, has determined the physical appearance of observatories through the centuries. When Galileo optimized the refractor telescope in 1609 by introducing multiple lenses, the first thing he did was point it towards the sky. Stonehenge, the Mayan pyramids and medieval churches all aim to express the unbreakable bond between the earth and the heavens. Here’s a look at four world-famous buildings and one soon-to-be-famous structure in orbit.įrom the beginning, humankind has molded its understanding of intangible concepts like heaven, eternity, infinity and the ‘beyond’ into tangible objects. But did you know that the astronomical observatory houses Europe’s first solar telescope, built to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity? The link between architecture and the stars is manifest in a myriad of structures, but form never followed function more closely than in the realm of astronomy. Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower built in 1921 is often hailed as an icon of Modern Architecture.
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