Štefánik´s Observatory
Encyclopedia
Petrín
Petřín is a hill in the center of Prague, Czech Republic. It rises some 130 m above the left bank of the Vltava River. The hill, almost entirely covered with parks, is a favorite recreational area for the inhabitants of Prague...
hill in the center of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
founded 1928 and named after Slovak
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
astronomer Milan Rastislav Štefánik
Milan Rastislav Štefánik
Milan Rastislav Štefánik , Kingdom of Hungary – May 4, 1919 in Ivanka pri Dunaji, Czechoslovakia) was a Slovak politician, diplomat, and astronomer. During World War I, he was General of the French Army, at the same time the Czechoslovak Minister of War, one of the leading members of the...
. Nowadays the observatory specializes above all in popularization of astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
and related natural sciences.
Technology
The main telescopeTelescope
A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
s of the observatory are a double refractor by Zeiss after the Viennese selenographer König
Rudolf König
Rudolf König was an Austrian merchant, amateur astronomer and selenographer.He was born in Vienna and received his technical education in Leipzig...
placed in the main dome (bought in 1928) and a Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope installed in the western dome in 1976. The eastern dome of the observatory is only being used for scientific observations and since 1999 equipped with a 40 cm mirror telescope by Meade.