ASP’s Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

ASP Board Statement on Harassment

Inspiring people to look up and wonder —
for 125 years

On a chilly February evening in 1889 in San Francisco, astronomers from Lick Observatory and members of the Pacific Coast Amateur Photographic Association — fresh from viewing the New Year’s Day total solar eclipse north of the City — met to share pictures and experiences. Edward Holden, Lick’s first director, complimented the amateurs on their service to science, and proposed to continue the good fellowship through the founding of a Society to advance the science of Astronomy, and to diffuse information concerning it. Thus the Astronomical Society of the Pacific was born.

Through more than a century of operation, as human understanding of the universe has advanced, so has the ASP — connecting scientists, educators,