U.S. Naval Observatory Reviews

Came here often waiting on the VP to get on the chopper and watching the tourists on the grounds along with the deer. Now retired I saw it as a tourist ...love it. Lol brought back memories.

Very important news to me on a day-to-day and future activities

Very important news to me on a day-to-day and future activities

I can't believe nobody has said it. I'd like to observe your naval! Ha!

Did not see any starts because of massive light polution, however was able to peer into the white house with the telescope which was interesting to say the least!

When I try to log on to their site it tells me it's an unsecure site and unsafe it seems like the Navy could do better than that

When this was Vice President Cheney's residence, Google Maps had the entire area inside the circle blurred. It's nice to be able to see it, again.

The comment about being able to look into the White House by telescope was intriguing, to say the least, and very revealing given the past residential history.

The United States Naval Observatory is pretty intresting but it wasn't on my top 10 things to see.

The US Naval Observatory was established in 1830 as a charting and instrument library for the US Navy. It was converted into an observatory in 1842. It is located in the fog valley near the Lincoln Memorial. Its main job is to manage the US Navy's Marine Astronomical Clock. Nautical equipment such as nautical charts, and calibrating the astronomical clock on the ship according to the moment when the star crosses the meridian. In 1870, American optical designer Clark built a 66 cm refracting telescope for the US Naval Observatory. It was 13 meters long and the main mirror weighed 45 kilograms. It was the world's largest telescope. In 1877, American astronomer Asaf Hall used the telescope to discover two satellites of Mars, Phobos and Phobos (Demos). In 1893, the Observatory moved to its current location in the Georgetown area.

The first director of the US Naval Observatory was the US Navy officer and famous oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. During his tenure, the Observatory used the first time in the United States to provide accurate time-keeping services and sent them to the United States for use by shipping, railways and other departments. In September 1913, the Paris Observatory in France used the Eiffel Tower as an antenna to receive radio signals from the US Naval Observatory and accurately measured the longitude difference between the two places [1].

Today, the US Naval Observatory continues its tradition and is still one of the world's most authoritative institutions in the field of timing and astrometric measurement. It compiles and publishes an annual astronomical calendar. The time service provided by the US Naval Observatory can be obtained by calling or accessing the Internet [2]. The US Naval Observatory's observation station near Flagstaff, Arizona, uses a high-precision gauge (PMM) to collate and publish the US Naval Observatory's catalogue. The USNO-B1.0 catalogue contains more than one billion stars. Wait, self-response and other data, the limit star is 21, etc., the capacity exceeds 80GB. The USNO-A2.0 catalogue contains more than 500 million stars. Its subset USNO-SA2.0 star catalog contains about 50 million stars for use when the requirements are not high. These catalogs are available free of charge on the Internet [3].