[1] One of the ten dish-antenna radiotelescope systems of the Very Long Baseline Array is located on a sublease within the Owens Valley observatory.

The Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO), one of the largest university-operated radio observatories in the world, has its origins in the late 1940s with three individuals: Lee DuBridge, president of California Institute of Technology (Caltech); Robert Bacher, chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy; and Jesse Greenstein, professor of astrophysics.

John Bolton and Gordon Stanley, two respected Australian astronomers, joined the Caltech faculty in order to undertake the construction of large dishes.

[2] In the film The Arrival (1996), Zane Zaminsky (Charlie Sheen) and Calvin (Richard Schiff) work at Owens Valley for the SETI Project and discover an alien signal.

In the film Contact (1997), the Owens Valley 40-meter telescope is mentioned as the location where Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster) did her thesis work.