The Harvard College Observatory is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and was founded in 1839. With the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, it forms part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
HCO houses a collection of approximately 500,000 astronomical plates taken between the mid-1880s and 1989 (with a gap from 1953–68). This 100-year coverage is a unique resource for studying temporal variations in the universe. A project currently is underway to digitally scan and archive these photographic plates.
Its equipment includes a 61-in. (155-cm) reflecting telescope and 15-in. (38-cm) and 12-in. (30-cm) refracting telescopes. Programs of the Harvard Observatory include various aspects of solar physics, stellar and nebular spectroscopy and photometry, and theoretical cosmology. Among the noted directors of the observatory have been W. C. Bond, G. P. Bond, E. C. Pickering, and Harlow Shapley. In 1973 the research programs of the Harvard College Observatory were merged with those of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; the observatory itself, however, maintains its separate status under the control of Harvard.
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