Meudon Observatory

Meudon Observatory sits in Meudon, a suburb southwest of Paris, where it has served since 1876 as a working satellite campus of the Paris Observatory -- one of the largest astronomical centres in the world.

About Meudon Observatory

Meudon is a French astrophysical and solar observatory, and today most of the Paris Observatory's staff work from this site rather than the historic building in central Paris. The Paris Observatory itself is a research institution of Paris Sciences et Lettres University and holds the distinction of being the world's oldest observatory still in operation.

History

The Paris Observatory was founded in 1667 by order of King Louis XIV's minister of finance, as part of a project to build a state-of-the-art astronomical facility for mapping the skies and aiding navigation, alongside the newly founded French Royal Academy of Sciences. The Meudon campus followed in 1876, expanding the observatory's reach into astrophysics and solar research. Across the centuries, fields including geodesy, cartography and meteorology developed at the observatory.

Location & getting there

Meudon lies just southwest of central Paris, in France's Île-de-France region, making it one of the more accessible historic observatories in Europe.

See your named star from here

An institution with roots stretching back to 1667 has spent centuries mapping exactly the kind of coordinates that identify a named star from Star Register. Browse the star catalogue to see how those coordinates are recorded today.