[jacquesm]

Directly as in: you do it yourself, without going through a bunch of intermediaries who will dazzle you with their pretty pictures, you yourself are the one observing the results.

Of course a STM does not work with visible light so it's pretty damn obvious that any measurements will use some other mechanism, and will have to have their measurements converted into an image that we can see. But that does not mean we are not observing. As opposed to reading about someone else's observations.

I take it you also believe that quasars have not been observed and ditto for the dark side of the moon?