Almost everyone at the radio astronomy center in Green Bank, West Virginia, is wearing a hat indoors on October 4. There are ancient guard hats, hard hats with outdated logos, decades-old National Radio Astronomy Observatory Fire Department hats, ballcaps long discontinued from the gift shop, and straight-up tinfoil.

Sue Shears, an administrator for the electronics division, wears an auld lang syne-style chapeau. You know: metallic green, gold band. "It's a new year," she says.

And that's kind of true. For the past 60 years, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has been Green Bank's parent organization. But it recently booted Green Bank out, after a 2012 announcement recommending that the National Science Foundation defund the center by October 1, 2016. "As of this past weekend, we shouldn't be here," says Mike Holstine, Green Bank's business manager. He gestures around his office, where his 1950s observatory security hat sits on a shelf and the view through the window shows telescopes standing in fields. We're still around.

Green Bank has survived the cutoff by asserting its independence. On October 1, its scientists broke away and formed their own rogue organization: the solo Green Bank Observatory. Thus the hats, which are part of a celebratory Spirit Week: Monday is oldest NRAO T-shirt day, Tuesday is astro hat day, and Wednesday is ice-cream social day. On Thursday, employees will don green and purple, the colors of their new logo, which stand in contrast to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's staid navy-and-white. On Saturday, October 8, the Green Bank Observatory gets its official christening.