Cincinnati Observatory

The Cincinnati Observatory sits atop Mount Lookout in the eastern part of the city, housing two historic refractor telescopes — an 1843 Merz und Mahler instrument and a 1904 Alvan Clark & Sons telescope — that are still in working order and available for public viewing on clear evenings. The observatory runs public nights with guided stargazing and lectures throughout the year.

The grounds also offer some of the better views of the Cincinnati skyline and the Ohio River valley. The building itself is a neoclassical dome structure that looks exactly as an observatory should look, and the neighbourhood around it — Mount Lookout Square — is one of the more pleasant hilltop villages in the city. The combination of genuine scientific history and an active public programme makes this more interesting than a typical historic site.

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The Cincinnati Observatory calls itself the "Birthplace of American Astronomy" — a claim rooted in the fact that Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, who founded it in 1843, trained a generation of American astronomers here and popularised astronomy through public lectures at a time when most Americans had never looked through a telescope. He later became a Union general in the Civil War, which somewhat disrupted his astronomical career.

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