Bjurakan Observatory

Dome of the 1 m Schmidt telescope with Mount Ararat in Turkey in the background .

The Byurakan Observatory and Astrophysical Observatory Byurakan is an observatory of the Armenian Academy of Sciences . It is located in Bjurakan on the slope of Mount Aragaz in Armenia at an altitude of 1500 meters.

history

The observatory was founded in 1946 by Viktor Ambartsumian and was one of the centers for astronomy in the Soviet Union . The research facility discovered special star clusters , the motion clusters (1947), over a thousand flickering stars , dozen supernovae , hundreds of Herbig-Haro objects and nebulae and hundreds of galaxies . After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it lost its funding. In 1964 and 1971, SETI conferences were held at the Byurakan Observatory . 2013 records were the first results of the observatory in the World Documentary Heritage of UNESCO added.

The building of the Cassegrain telescope in the background and that of the 1 m Schmidt telescope in the foreground

The main telescope of the observatory is a Cassegrain reflecting telescope , the main mirror of which has a diameter of 2.6 meters. There are also two smaller Schmidt telescopes with a diameter of 1.0 meters and 0.5 meters.

↑ Byurakan SETI conferences (1964 and 1971) daviddarling.info; bao-history bao.am/history, accessed July 19, 2010
^ First Byurakan Survey (FBS or Markarian survey). UNESCO / Memory of the World - Register, 2013, accessed July 5, 2013 .