Observing Observatories

From the world wide wanderers comes some photos of the top of Mauna Kea, home to the Northern Hemisphere's biggest collection of big telescopes.

Courtesy of Ask Maps, here's the same place from on high.

Now from Google Maps, Observatorio del Tiede on Tenerife and its companion Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

In the Southern Hemisphere we have the Very Large Telescopes of the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal and some more telescopes on La Silla. (Low resolution I'm afraid, from both sources. As are Cerro Tololo and Cerro Panchon homes of CTIO and Gemini South respectively. Coverage in the Andes just isn't what it ought to be.)

And, in a class all its own, here is Israel's biggest observatory from the same vantage point.