observatory

The word observatory means a facility for carrying out observations. Typical astronomy usage of the term is for the housing or facility for a telescope, but the term has also been used for locations, for organizations dealing with or managing multiple locations or telescopes at multiple locations, for individual telescopes, for spacecraft carrying telescopes, and occasionally in conjunction with other types of detectors (e.g., for neutrinos). The term is often used in the names of these. The normal presumption is one or more telescopes will be included, which may be non-optical, e.g., radio telescopes. Examples illustrating the various uses of the term:

• Keck Observatory - facility/site with two optical telescopes.
• Chandra X-ray Observatory - spacecraft.
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory - organization managing/coordinating a number of radio telescopes at various locations.
• European Gravitational Observatory - organization operating the gravitational-wave detector Virgo.

See list of observatories.