Yesterday, 12 July 2009, I was watching Stage 9 of the 2009 Tour de France bicycle race as they climbe the mountain Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, when the helicopter showed an observatory on a peak hig above the cyclists.  The narrator said it was a "weather station", but I recognized it for what it was, an astronomical observatory.  Today (13 Jul 2009) I did a Web search for Col  Tourmalet and found reference to the Pic du Midi Observatory, which I found with further Web searching. 

 

Quite a historic observatory, initially started in the 1870s (as a weather station) but came to be the highest and most important astronomical observatory in France.  In the early 1960s NASA used it to recon the Moon prior to the Apollo landings. 

 

I remembered that I had bought a large "coffee-table" book, Great Observatories of the World  last February during my Texas vacation.  I went to it, hoping I might find something about this observatory.  Lo and behold, I was amazed to find it listed as the first
 observatory in the book, with a great two-page write-up!  I am tempted to gather my research and my thoughts together and write a newsletter article about it.

 

I even found a French photographer's Web site with virtual-reality panoramic views of the observatory on its mountaintop, almost 3000 meters above sea level.  Most of the breath-taking photos show it to be ABOVE THE CLOUDS!  Until better observing sites were established in the Andes Mountains and Hawaii, this was one of the foremost and best observing sites on earth.

Check it out at Gilles Vidal’s virtual tour of the Pic du Midi Observatory.

  

George R.