The Karl Schwarzschild Observatory (german: Karl-Schwarzschild-Observatorium) is a German

astronomical Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies ...

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. His ...

Tautenburg Tautenburg is a municipality in the district Saale-Holzland, in Thuringia, Germany. It is home to the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory The Karl Schwarzschild Observatory (german: Karl-Schwarzschild-Observatorium) is a German astronomical observato ...

near

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and larg ...

. It was founded in 1960 as an affiliated institute of the former

German Academy of Sciences at Berlin The German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, german: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (DAW), in 1972 renamed the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (''Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (AdW)''), was the most eminent research institution ...

and named in honour of the astronomer and physicist

Karl Schwarzschild Karl Schwarzschild (; 9 October 1873 – 11 May 1916) was a German physicist and astronomer. Schwarzschild provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for the limited case of a single spherical non-r ...

(1873–1916). In 1992, the institute was re-established as Thuringian State Observatory (''Thüringer Landessternwarte'', TLS). Alfred-Jensch-Teleskop-1

The observatory has the largest

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...

located in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, which is also the largest

Schmidt camera A Schmidt camera, also referred to as the Schmidt telescope, is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. The design was invented by Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. Some notable exa ...

in the world. Made by VEB Zeiss Jena (the branch of Carl Zeiss located in Jena in what was then

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

), this instrument is known as (2m) Alfred Jensch Telescope: though its mirror is 2 metres in diameter, the telescope's

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

is 1.34 m. The observatory has observed several

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

s and

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the most ...

s, as around the stars HD 8673, 30 Arietis, 4 Ursae Majoris, and around

HD 13189 HD 13189 is an 8th magnitude star in Triangulum constellation. In 2005, a planetary companion or brown dwarf was announced in orbit around this star. At the time, the parallax estimate was , which would suggest a distance of with a ...

on 5 April 2005. The observatory also hosts an International station for the

interferometric Interferometry is a technique which uses the ''interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber op ...

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...

LOFAR.

References

External links

*
Interview with director on ESA's plans for finding Earth-like planets
{{Authority control Astronomical observatories in Germany Buildings and structures in Saale-Holzland-Kreis Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) 1960 establishments in East Germany Science and technology in East Germany

See also

References

External links