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Photo Credit: T.A.Rector, I.P.Dell'Antonio/NOAO/AURA/NSF
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In 1950, the workhorses of astronomy were optical telescopes. But the only large telescopes in existence were in the hands of private institutions and few astronomers had access to them. The National Science Foundation responded by creating some of the finest observatories in the world, which gave access to all astronomers on the basis of scientific merit. These facilities have fueled what many consider to be the golden age of astronomy.
Today, NSF-supported ground-based facilities provide essential capabilities that complement NASA space-based instruments such as the Hubble Telescope, and in the near future, new telescopes with capacities unthinkable 50 years ago are coming online. For example, NSF facilities may soon open a radically new window on the universe, when the Laser-Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) offers astronomers their first tool for observing gravity waves—ripples in the
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very fabric of space and time produced by violent events in the distant universe.
The world-class facilities supported by NSF include the world's largest remotely controllable radio telescope, the world's largest single-dish radio telescope and the world's most expansive telescope facility (stretching from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands), and "twin" telescopes that can see the entire night sky.
These "eyes on the sky" have helped uncover many secrets of the universe. Scientists and the public first learned that the distribution of galaxies in the universe is lumpy and that galaxies existed billions of years ago. Astronomers backed by NSF have detected more than 50 planets orbiting nearby stars. And NSF observatories have allowed astronomers to gather more information about stars, clusters, nebulae, galaxies and other cosmic objects that has helped advance virtually every branch of contemporary astronomy.
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