David Dunlap Observatory

The David Dunlap Observatory is an astronomical observatory of the University of Toronto in the north of the city in Richmond Hill, Ontario. It is located on an approximately 76 -acre site.

The main telescope of the observatory is a large 1.88 m reflecting telescope, which was once the second largest telescope in the world today and still largest telescope in Canada. In addition to the large reflecting telescope to find more small telescopes on the site; before there was even a small radio telescope. Since the observatory with 238 above sea level. NN is relatively low and is now surrounded by numerous settlements (and thereby of many artificial light sources ), the efficiency is significantly lower than other, more remote observatories. Nevertheless, the observatory is still used for Spektralastronomie; in the past it had a pioneering role in the study of globular clusters and contributed to the realization that it is X-1 is a black hole in the X-ray binary star Cygnus.

History

The observatory was founded on 31 May 1935, Clarence Chant. The business was unprofitable in recent times through the increasing light pollution in the vicinity of the observatory and the concomitant decrease in performance of the optical telescope. 2007 because of the observatory was auctioned by the University of Toronto; The company Corsica Development, Inc. was awarded the contract, which the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 2009 permitted to operate as a teaching institution. Today the observatory tours and isolated scientific observations take place.