Paris observatory. 1891 illustration of men at the Paris Observatory, France, during an astronomy convention. The Paris Observatory was funded by King Louis XIV to extend France's maritime power and international trade. In 1863, the observatory published the first modern weather maps and in 1887 began the Carte du Ciel (Map of the Sky) project, an international effort to map the positions of millions of stars, which was superseded by modern astronomical techniques before it could be finished.