I moved into my new house about a year ago and started working on my observatory immediately. I don’t mean actually working on it - rather, I was refining plans and interviewing contractors.

I fully expected that I would have the observatory to be completed and in use by fall. Alas, that was not to be. Supply chain and scheduling issues delayed the start of the project until much later than I wanted, and this pushed us into late fall and early winter, where weather has become a factor. The old adage that construction projects always take longer than you want and cost more than you estimated is certainly proving true here!

To complete the project, the following must still be done:

install the drive system
install the manual lockdown clamps
seal the N and S wall/roof interfaces
Install vinyl siding and trim.

This completes the contractor piece, and then I can work on the inside of the building, and in spring, I can start the lawn restoration.

While the observatory has been constructed, I have started to think about its name…

A Name For My Observatory!

I have to tell you - coming up with a name that I liked was much tougher for me than anticipated. I spent way too much time on this exercise.

But let me cut to the chase and share with you the Name I finally came up with!

It will be called The Whispering Skies Astrophotographic Observatory.

*The name and art I will use for the sign on my observatory!*

So why THIS name? How did it come about? Let's take a look at that!

An Observatory Should Have A Name

If your story is anything like mine, the path to building your own observatory was long and tortuous.

At first, you begin to do astrophotography in your driveway or backyard or at some remote site - until that no longer seems like a reasonable way to continue.

Then you start thinking about building your own observatory, and your mind begins chewing on all of the options:

Dome or Roll-Off?
One pier or more?
Concrete piers or steel?
What size?
Where are you going to put it?
Design and blueprints?
Build yourself or get a contractor involved?

There is a lot to navigate, but it was even more challenging for me because our property would not support an observatory! We would need to move to a new location to build one, which is a nontrivial task.

As of right now, I have passed all of those hurdles, and the observatory, as I have been sharing, is 905% built and on its way to completion.

All observatories need a name, and after all this time and effort, I wanted that name to be “just right"—whatever that means!

Finding the ‘Right’ Name!

So, I began to consider an appropriate name.

I thought about it.

I asked the family about it.

I asked friends about it.

I looked at what others had done when they named their observatories.

I started brainstorming lists of ideas (no bad ideas - right?)

I even asked ChatGPT to weigh in.

I soon found that naming an observatory might be the most challenging aspect of this whole project!

I came up with literally hundreds of possible. I mean hundreds! But most did not resonate with me.

Or - if I liked a name - I found that others liked it as well, and it was already in use!

So, how do you go about naming it?

What makes for a good name?

While a name that others would like is one thing, this is my Observatory. Ultimately, the name has to be something that works for me and feels right to me.

I had some initial thoughts:

I am a deepsky imager, so there are some themes around that.
My observatory will have four telescope piers, so maybe something around that.
I have a website called Cosgrove's Cosmos. So maybe some play on that?

Slowly and carefully, my efforts created a very long and ever-growing list of possible names.

Unfortunately, none of those names felt right to me. When I researched stories about how others had come up with an observatory name, I found that at some point, they had encountered some inspiration and instantly knew they had found the right name.

Apparently, I had not yet come across that particular piece of inspiration.

I was starting to despair.

Asking Our Future AI Overlords for Help

Yes, I was even desperate enough to ask ChatGPT to weigh in.

Its responses were not bad. They were not great either.

But in truth, it was a good stimulus and got my creative juices flowing a bit more.

Let me give you a taste of what that was like:

I'm building an observatory with four telescopes in it, and I'm looking for a good name that uses my last name, Cosgrove, as part of it.

ChatGPT

How about "Cosgrove QuadroScope Observatory"? It emphasizes the four telescopes and includes your name.

Not bad. Can you give me some more ideas?

ChatGPT

Of course! Here are a few more ideas:

"Cosgrove Stellar Quartet"
"Cosgrove Four-Point Observatory"
"Cosgrove Quad-Starlight Observatory"
"Cosgrove Fourfold Skies Observatory"
"Cosgrove Celestial Quad"

Do any of these appeal to you?

I have an astronomy website called Cosgrove's Cosmos, and I am now building an observatory, and I'm looking for a name of the observatory, and I'd like the name of the observatory to be tied back to the website name. Any ideas?

ChatGPT

Sure! Here are some ideas that tie the observatory name back to your website:

"Cosgrove's Cosmos Observatory"
"Cosgrove's Cosmic View"
"Cosgrove's Celestial Observatory"
"Cosgrove's Cosmos Stargate"
"Cosgrove's Cosmic Haven"

Do any of these fit what you're looking for?

Yeah, I got it. Can you give me some more ideas?

ChatGPT

Absolutely! Here are a few more suggestions:

"Cosgrove's Universe Watchtower"
"Cosgrove's Cosmic Explorer Observatory"
"Cosgrove's Cosmos Skyward Observatory"
"Cosgrove's Celestial Gateway"
"Cosgrove's Cosmic Observatory Hub"

Do any of these resonate with you?

So - not too bad. Certainly better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Organizing By Themes

After many ChatGPT and brainstorming sessions, I had a very long list of possible names.

Reviewing these, I saw that some categories or themes were beginning to pop out.

So I reorganized them by these themes and then threw out the really bad ones (there were a lot!).

Below is what is what I ended up with:

Location Themes

Starlight Hill

Mendon (name of the local area)

Jokey Names

Night Shift (well, we tend to work at night, right?)

Night Light (we capture light at night -how literal!)

Night Sight

Shooting Stars (as in, I shoot stars with my cameras)

The Sub Shop (we do produce subs!)

Cloud Dodger Observatory (Welcome to Western New York State weather!)

Night Themes

Night Watch

Night Raider

Night Ranger

Night Eyes

Cosmic Themes

Cosmic Voyager

Cosmic Explorer

Cosmic Horizons

Cosmic Sensations

Cosmic Acquisitions

Cosmic Wonders

Cosmic Whispers

Sky/Deepsky Themes

Sky Ranger

Sky Quest

Deepsky Quest

Skyscraper

Deepsky Whispers

DeepSky Stalker

Deepsky Seeker

The Mysterious Sky

The Distant Sky

Light/Photon Themes

Whispering Photons

Photon Harvester

Distant light

Photon Wrangler

Whiff of Photons

Whispering Light

Quiet Light

Far-Flung Photons

Photon Prospector

Whispering Themes

(I should explain this a bit. I have personally resonated with this idea that what we image deals with a thin stream of photons barely above the noise floor. When the night sky speaks to us, it does so in “Whispers.” Poetic, Corny - but I like it.)

Cosmic Whispers

Whispering Photons

Celestial Whispers

Night Whispers

The Whispering Comos

The Whispering Stars

Deepsky Whispers

Night Sky Whispers

Primordial Whispers

The Whispering Night

Deep Space Whispers

Starlight Whispers

Whispering Light

Distance Themes

Far Frontiers

Distant Light

The Distant Skies

Echos of Infinity

Distant celestial Shores

Distant Shores

A Name is Found!

After reviewing everything, I finally found a couple that resonated with me - at least a little bit. They were good but not quite perfect:

Whispering Photons

Night Sky Whispers

I mentioned that I seemed to really like the idea of “Whispers” when it comes to deepsky imaging. So, it is not completely surprising that my top two names have some flavor of “whisper” in them.

From them came a new combination - that suddenly - just felt right:

Whispering Skies

The Whispering part really emphasized the nature of the faint light we captured. I have discussed whispering photons in many posts on my website.

Skies - plural - also sounded right to me. But we only have one sky, right? Well, not really. The skies change with season and time of night. Skies change with weather conditions. For me, the skies even change based on the direction I am facing.

So, finally, I had a name that felt right to me.

You may not feel the same way about it. You might not even like it at all. That’s OK. You don’t have to, but I do! :-)

Building a New Logo

Now that I have a name, I also wanted a Logo.

Why? I wanted something that I could use for a sign that I would mount on the observatory itself and as a logo for my website when I blog about the project.

I had two ways I could go:

I could create one leveraging the design language of my current logo for Cosgrove's Cosmos.
On the other hand, the observatory is distinctly different from my webpage, so it could take its own path.

I decided to create both versions and then choose one.

But how was I going to get these designed?

When I created the website logo, I used DesignCrowd and held a contest. However, doing that now would cost much more than a few years ago. Given the costs of my Observatory project, I did not want to spend much on the design if I could avoid it.

So, I started to play with ChatGPT again.

I would describe what I wanted and have it create an image based on those descriptions.

Frankly, I was surprised by the quality of some of the art in the resulting logos—certainly better than I could have done.

But - to my surprise, I found that ChatGPT cannot spell worth a damn if you wanted to use text in the image itself!

It would create great logo art marred by text that was just plain wrong. If you pointed this out to it, it would apologize profusely and promise to fix it, but then it would make it even worse!

*ChatGPT using words in an image? Not so smart AI!*

It was frustrating because they often looked great - except for the text.

If you search for this problem on Google, you will soon encounter the concept of “prompts.” The idea is that if you phrase your request just right, ChatGPT will give you what you want.

Sure… Abou that….

I spent way too much time trying to ask our future AI Overlords the right questions and found nothing but frustration!

But - sometimes - every so often - it would get something very close to right.

Here are some samples of what it created.

Finally, after trying lots of iterations and with a lot of prompt variations, one popped up that really caught my eye:

*Finaly - something interesting from ChatGPT!*

I liked the basic art and the 3D look. I liked the way the “Whispering Skies” looked. The “Astrophotographic Observatory" part? - not so much.

But - this is something that seemed to work for me. I needed to change it, but ChatGPT can only create a raster image. I probably needed a vector image that I could edit.

So here is what I wanted to change:

Go from raster to vector graphics
Add another line above the name with “Cosgrove’s Cosmos.”
Fix the problems with “Astrophotographic Observatory."

So I went to Fiverr and found a guy willing to do this for a reasonable flat fee. You can see how that came out below.

I was pretty happy with the result at first, but then I decided to make the moon look more realistic. I ended up doing that myself using Affinity Design. And with that change, I had a final design that broke away from the look of my Cosgrove's Cosmos logo!

The desgin after vector graphics conversion.

*And the final design after I added a more realistic moon graphic to replace the abstract planet design.*

So that gave me one option.

I decided to take the approach of leveraging Cosgrove's Cosmos on my own. I used the same basic design and font style, but I put the emphasis on the observatory's name.

Here is what I came up with for that.

Making a Choice

So, which did I pick?

Both!

I like them both - why must I discard one?

One will be used as a sign that I will mount on the Observatory itself, and the other will be a logo I use on my website when talking about the observatory!

I can have my cake and eat it too!

So, my quest for a name is complete. I hope you like my final selection. I know I do, and really, that’s all that counts. :-)

Now, I need to complete the observatory project so I can move forward!

Wish me luck!

observatoryconstructionnamelogosignu14

Patrick A. Cosgrove

A retired technology geek leveraging his background and skills in Imaging Systems and Computers to pursue the challenging realm of Astrophotography. This has been a fascinating journey where Art and Technology confront the beauty and scale of a universe that boggles the mind…. It’s all about capturing ancient light - those whispering photons that have traveled long and far….

https://cosgrovescosmos.com/

Naming Your Observatory

Earlier Posts in the Observatory Series

Observatory Status

A Name For My Observatory!

An Observatory Should Have A Name

Finding the ‘Right’ Name!

Asking Our Future AI Overlords for Help

Organizing By Themes

Location Themes

Jokey Names

Night Themes

Cosmic Themes

Sky/Deepsky Themes

Light/Photon Themes

Whispering Themes

Distance Themes

A Name is Found!

Building a New Logo

Making a Choice

Whispering Skies Observatory: Developing a Computer and Networking Strategy!

Observatory Update: Powering Up the Observatory!