For more information on Kitt Peak, click on the photograph above.

Philip Morrison wrote of U. S. Observatoriesin the Scientific American (April, 1977):

H. T. Kirby-Smith, professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is a devoted and knowing teacher and amateur of astronomy. He has gone to a number of the principal observatories across the land to see what he could see, and he has prepared a compendium of lesser but still exciting places to visit one is surely near you with excellent photographs and with comment that is practical, evocative and penetrating, befitting the poet he is. On the 100-inch at Mount Wilson: "The mounting of the telescope has a desperate look to it; all girders and rivets, and so ready to compromise with the requirements of rigidity that a large circle around the celestial pole is inaccessible." At Palomar he complains about the dim light and the glassed-in visitors' booths. which are required to keep the heat input low but which ensure that "the view of the giant telescopes is like that enjoyed by those who saw the Titanic founder: impressive but dim." He suggests another stance. He also gives valuable hints on motels and side trips and on the problem of children running in circles along the reverberating circular walls! Fifteen centers are described in detail, mostly from on-the-spot-spot experience, with a good serving of history and comment. Then there are 80 pages of briefer comments, state by state, based on a careful survey by mail of many possible places to view telescopes, astronomers and the sky. "It is a pleasure, though, to have discovered that many great research centers . . . encourage the interested and intelligent visitor and suffer patiently the ignorant and the inane. Good scientists do not forget that a sense of mystery, or just a healthy curiosity, animates the most valuable endeavors." The Very Large Array on New Mexico's Plains of San Augustin spans "perhaps the most beautiful remaining 'wide open space' in the country." He describes the mighty radio hammock at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, although he did not get there. That instrument, amidst its domed emerald hills. offers one of the most striking architectural views and settings in the hemisphere. This book is a model for informed travelers; one hopes that many another such guide to the local habitation of scientific interest will appear.

Photos of Kitt Peak and McGraw-Hill Observatory copyright Krzyszt Z. Stanek