<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Related media on Wikimedia Commons </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> (edit on Wikidata) </Td> </Tr> <P> The Harvard College Observatory (HCO) is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy . It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and was founded in 1839 . With the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, it forms part of the Harvard--Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics . </P> <P> HCO houses a collection of approximately 500,000 astronomical plates taken between the mid-1880s and 1989 (with a gap from 1953--68). This 100 - year coverage is a unique resource for studying temporal variations in the universe . The Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard project is digitally scanning and archiving these photographic plates . </P>

1850 harvard observatory takes 1st photograph of a star (vega)