A French astronomical institution that turns up in three very different chapters of the archive. 17 February 1846. François Arago, permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences, watched Angélique Cottin, the "electric girl" of Bouvigny, give demonstrations there with colleagues. In 1879 José Árbol y Bonilla studied celestial photography at the observatory, years before his famous 1883 observation of 447 objects crossing the Sun from Zacatecas. During the 1956 Orly Airport radar and Air France DC-3 sighting, the observatory suggested a US weather balloon carried by the jet stream. Critics doubted any balloon could reach such speeds.
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