Belogradchik Observatory

Belogradchik Observatory
Organization	Institute of Astronomy, BAS
Location	Belogradchik, Bulgaria
Coordinates	43°37′22″N 22°40′30″E / 43.62278°N 22.67500°E
Altitude	650 m (2,134 ft)
Established	1961 / 1965
Website	www.astro.bas.bg/~aobel/
Telescopes
Zeiss telescope
Zeiss telescope	60 cm Cassegrain reflector
Celestron telescope	14 inch (36 cm) Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector
Zeiss telescope	15 cm Cassegrain reflector
	Location of Belogradchik Observatory
	Related media on Commons
	[edit on Wikidata]

The Astronomical Observatory of Belogradchik or Belogradchik Observatory is an astronomical observatory^[1] owned and operated by the Institute of Astronomy of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. It is located near the town of Belogradchik in northwestern Bulgaria, at the foot of the Western Balkan Mountains. The other observatory operated by the same institute is the Rozhen Observatory.

History

Built in 1961 by a group of astronomy enthusiasts led by high school physics teacher and later chief assistant professor in

Soviet Academy of Sciences [ru] (AН СССР). In 1976 the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences took over operation. Since then the observatory was used entirely for scientific research, in cooperation with astronomers from the Department of Astronomy at Faculty of Physics of Sofia University

and members of foreign institutes. By the time the Institute of Astronomy became a separate structure of the Academy in 1995, the observatory saw a notable revival. During the 1990s and 2000s Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexander Antov, a second long term director of the observatory, modernized both its residential and scientific facilities, including the addition of a smaller dome in 1994. Its current director is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Anton Strigachev. In July 2015 the observatory marked its 50 years of operation by hosting the X annual conference of the Bulgarian Astronomical Society (SAB).

Equipment

The observatory started out with a single 15 cm

Schmidt-Cassegrain

model.

Instrumentation

In 1973 the first Bulgarian single channel electro-

CCD camera was used between 1997 and 2008. Since 2008 the main 60 cm telescope is equipped with a CCD camera FLI PL-9000, manufactured by Finger Lakes Instrumentation (USA). It uses a KAF-09000 chip with a resolution of 3056 x 3056 px without binning, and a 16-bit ADC. The pixel size is 12 μm which gives, with this telescope, a scale of 0.330 arcsec/px without binning and 1.0 arcsec/px with binning 3 x 3. The field of view is 17' x 17'. BVRcIc Johnson

-Cousins standard filters are used.

Observations

At first the observatory has been used for satellite astrometry (1960s-1970s). Between 1964 and 1974 more than 1000 Soviet satellites were observed and data sent to Mission Control Centre in Moscow for orbit corrections. Later, during the 1970s and 1980s, Photo-electric surveys of more than 200 catalogue double and multiple galaxies (1970s-1980s) were carried out. Holmberg effect was used to confirm or rule out physical and visual systems (binaries and multiplets). Notable results were included in "A General Catalogue of Photoelectric Magnitudes and Colours in the UBV System of 3578 Galaxies, Brighter than the 16-th V Magnitude (1936-1982)" by G. Longo, Antoinette de Vaucouleurs and H.G. Corwin (1983) (see also

Toruń Observatory), Germany, France, and India, among others. Simultaneous observations with Rozhen Observatory

are also regularly carried out. Observational time is managed and distributed by a specialized time allocation committee of the institute.

References

^ "Astronomical Observatory". Fodor's. Retrieved 2024-02-05.

External links

[1] "Astronomical Observatory". Fodor's. Retrieved 2024-02-05.

[1]