The MAS was formed in 1932 with an ad taken out in The Milwaukee Journal of September 18 announcing an organizational meeting the following Wednesday at the home of Luverne Armfield.

The next month, the AAVSO offered the MAS a 13-inch plate glass mirror which they could use as long as the club pursued the study of variable stars.

[5] In 1935, Luverne Armfield along with J. Wesley Simpson, Director of the Missouri-Southern Illinois Observers (MSIO), formed a national organization, the American Amateur Astronomers Association (AAAA).

It was a confederation of local societies modeled after the British Astronomical Association with its own publication, Amateur Astronomy (AA).

The individual clubs consolidated their own newsletters into AA and traded information on scientific observing programs and eventually observatories and telescope making.

[6] Development of the Milwaukee Astronomical Society Observatory began in 1936 with the installation of an 8-inch, f/15 reflector in a roll-away shed.

[8][9] With the donation of a 12.5" f/7.4 Newtonian reflector by member Ralph Buckstaff, in 1949 another domed observatory was constructed to house that instrument.

The highlight of the program came in the early morning of September 5, 1962, when members Gale Highsmith, Leonard Schaefer, and Raymond Zit observed the re-entry of Sputnik 4, which allowed the recovery of some of the pieces which fell in and around Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Because of largely inadequate telescopic equipment, from 1970 to 1974, the MAS designed and built 12 "portascopes," which were 10 inch f/5.6 reflectors on a fixed fork mount.

[20] The MAS holds a series of Open House nights at their observatory for the general public from late Spring to early Fall.