observatory

[balakrishnanijk]

Do English people use the definite article before observatories?
the (?) Greenwich Observatory
the (?) Mount Wilson Observatory

[Anglika]

No, not in general use.

[balakrishnanijk]

Dear Anglika
I saw "the Greenwich Observatory" in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

[Anglika]

What was the exact reference - the full sentence?

[balakrishnanijk]

It was simply "the Greenwich Observatory". This phrase is given as an example.

[Anglika]

I am being obtuse - but an example of what?

[balakrishnanijk]

Here are some sentences I found on the Internet:
The Leander McCormick Observatory is currently used for education, public outreach, and training students in observartion techniques.
The Fan Mountain Observatory is operated by the University of Virginia.
The Mount Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains above the Los Angeles basin is almost by any measure the most significant astronomical observatory ever built.
The Palomar Observatory is located in north San Diego County, California.

Explore the history of time and astronomy at the Greenwich Observatory, the home of Greenwich Mean Time. Here the Meridian that divides the earth's eastern and western hemispheres passes right through, where millions of visitors have been photographed standing with a foot on either side. At 1 o'clock every day since 1833, the time-ball, a red ball on a rod on one of the building's turrets, falls so that sailors on ships on the Thames could set their clocks by it.
Dear Anglica,
How is that?

[balakrishnanijk]

Yet another thing I have noticed about the definite article is that in New York Times and Associated Press news reports(both American) they tend to use the definite article before some place proper names as in the San Francisco International Airport whereas the Guardian might say that 'brown sugar worth
₤200000 was seized at Heathrow Airport'.

[balakrishnanijk]

I have quoted a lot of example sentences from the Internet but nobody has responded so far.