A solar observatory at an altitude of 2810 m in the Sacramento Mountains, 20 km southeast of Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was founded in 1949 by the US Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, which operated it until 1976 when it was taken over by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). It became part of the National Solar Observatory when that body was founded in 1984. Its main instrument is the Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope, opened in 1969, a vacuum tower telescope with a 0.76-m entrance window atop a tower 41.5 m high and a 1.6-m main mirror which produces a solar image 0.5 m in diameter. The John W. Evans Solar Facility, a 0.4-m coronagraph opened in 1953, was closed in 2015.

http://nsosp.nso.edu/ Official observatory website