Byurakan Observatory

The Byurakan Observatory, or Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory is an observatory of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. It is located in Byurakan on the slope of Mount Aragats in Armenia at 1500m.

History

The observatory was founded in 1946 by Viktor Ambartsumian and was one of the centers for Astronomy of the Soviet Union. From the research facility were special star clusters, the movement of clusters discovered (1947 ), over a thousand Flackersterne, dozens of Supernovae, hundreds of Herbig - Haro objects and fog and hundreds of galaxies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union lost its funding. 1964 and 1971 were held SETI conferences at the Byurakan Observatory. 2013 records of the first research results of the Observatory were included in the World Documentary Heritage by UNESCO.

Equipment

The main telescope of the observatory is a Cassegrain reflecting telescope whose primary mirror 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.