The true predecessors of the modern observatory were those established in the Islamic world. Observatories were built at Damascus and Baghdad as early as the 9th–10th century ce. A splendid one was built at Marāgheh (now in Iran) about 1260 ce, and substantial modifications in Ptolemaic astronomy were introduced there.

Where was the first observatory founded in the US?

1842: Cincinnati Observatory, USA.

Who invented the space observatory?

Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, used the largest telescope of his day in the 1920s at the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, Calif., to discover galaxies beyond our own. Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space, the ultimate mountaintop.