Description: The National Air Museum was created by a congressional act on August 12, 1946. Its name was changed to the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in 1966 as part of a congressional act authorizing a separate building to house its collections. The museum opened to the public on July 1, 1976. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center located in Chantilly, Virginia, opened to the public on
Description: The postcards in this gallery are from observatories associated with the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory established in 1890 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the Smithsonian’s research centers. Together with the Harvard College Observatory, it forms the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.The Mt. Wilson Observatory opened in the early