The Karl Schwarzschild Observatory (Officially: ''Thuringia State Observatory Tautenburg'') is a German

astronomical Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include ...

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

in Tautenburg near

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany 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 in ...

Thuringia Thuringia (; officially the Free State of Thuringia, ) is one of Germany, Germany's 16 States of Germany, states. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area. Er ...

. It is owned and operated as under public law by the State of Thuringia. 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, , in 1972 renamed the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (''Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (AdW)''), was the most eminent Research institute, research institution of East Germany (German Democratic Repub ...

in GDR 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).

Observatory

The observatory has the largest

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

located in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, 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 ...

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 known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

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

aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

is 1.34 m. The observatory has observed several

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...

s and

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets, but less than the least massive main sequence, main-sequence stars. Their mass is approximately 13 to 80 Jupiter mass, times that of Jupiter ()not big en ...

s, as around the stars HD 8673,

30 Arietis 30 Arietis (abbreviated 30 Ari) is a 6th- apparent-magnitude multiple star system in the constellation of Aries. ''30 Arietis'' is the Flamsteed designation. 30 Arietis A and B are separated by or about at a distance of 130 light ...

, 4 Ursae Majoris, and around

HD 13189 HD 13189 is a star with an orbiting companion in the northern constellation of Triangulum constellation. With an apparent visual magnitude of +7.57, it is too faint to be visible to the normal human eye. The distance to this system is ...

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 opt ...

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna (radio), 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 r ...

LOFAR LOFAR may refer to: * Low-Frequency Array, a large radio telescope system based in the Netherlands * Low Frequency Analyzer and Recorder and Low Frequency Analysis and Recording, for low-frequency sounds {{disambiguation ...

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 1960 establishments in East Germany Science and technology in East Germany

Observatory

See also

References

External links