Observatories Beyond the Usual Centers, From Athens in 1842 to the Gran Telescopio Canarias in 2009

Founded in 1842 in Thissio, Athens, this is the oldest stop on the path, and the atlas records it as an optical observatory. It shows a national government choosing an observatory as an early research institution.

Miklos Konkoly-Thege founded it in 1871 as a private observatory, and it now sits in Budapest with a mountain station at Piszkesteto, about 80 km away in the Matra mountains. Its recorded subjects are variable stars, stellar photometry and exoplanets.

Completed in 1918 on Observatory Hill in Saanich, British Columbia, it was built by Canada as a federal observatory. A 48-inch optical telescope was later added to the site.

Founded in 1923 at Lembang in West Java, it is recorded as an optical observatory. Its telescopes are used to observe visual binary stars, study eclipsing binaries photometrically, image lunar craters and observe planets.

Established in 1934 in Xuanwu District, Nanjing, it is described in the atlas as China's first modern astronomical research institute. The atlas lists a Schmidt telescope with a 4K by 4K CCD detector among its optical instruments.

Officially opened on 31 May 1935 in Richmond Hill, Ontario, it is built around a 74-inch (1.88 m) reflector. Its recorded use is measuring distances to globular clusters in visible light.

Viktor Hambardzumyan founded it in 1946 on the slope of Mount Aragats in Armenia, at 1400 meters, and the Armenian Academy of Sciences owns and operates it. Its recorded discoveries include stellar associations in 1947, more than 1,000 flare stars and hundreds of Herbig-Haro objects.

Set up in 1966 in the USSR and now run by the Russian Academy of Sciences, it sits in the Bolshoi Zelenchuk Valley of the Greater Caucasus near Nizhny Arkhyz. It houses the BTA-6 optical telescope and the RATAN-600 radio telescope, which observes from 610 MHz to 30 GHz.

Inaugurated on 29 June 1985 by the Spanish royal family and six European heads of state, it is a multi-telescope site on La Palma run by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. It is ranked the second best site for optical and infrared astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere, after Mauna Kea.

Established in 1988 in Mitaka, Tokyo, by amalgamating three existing research organizations. Its recorded facilities include a 45 m millimeter radio telescope, and its description notes that it runs the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.

Located at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, it took its first scientific images in January 1999. It is a Ritchey-Chretien reflector with an 8.2 meter primary mirror, used for deep wide-field surveys in visible and infrared light.

Formally opened on 24 July 2009 and inaugurated by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, it is a 10.4 m segmented-mirror reflector at Roque de los Muchachos, the site of stop nine. Its OSIRIS instrument covers wavelengths from 0.365 to 1.05 micrometers.