Tuorla Observatory

Tuorla Observatory

Tuorla observatory is the Department of Astronomy at the University of Turku, southwest Finland. Currently it is the largest astronomical research institute in Finland. Together with the Space Research Laboratory at the Physics Department of the University of Turku, it forms Väisälä Institute of Space Physics and Astronomy (VISPA).

History

Tuorla observatory was established 1952 by professor Yrjö Väisälä. A new observatory was needed because old Iso-Heikkilä Observatory close to the centre of Turku started suffering heavy light pollution of nearby city and especially industrial areas to the south of observatory. A new place was found Tuorla, which is one of the small villages in Piikkiö municipality about 12 kilometres from Turku to direction of Helsinki.

First part of observatory contained a main building and 51 meter long tunnel for optical research. Due to the growing size of the department, new parts to it has been build at 1989 and 2002. Since 1974 observatory was part of the Physics Department until 1991 when it became again an independent research institute of the university.

Observatory has several telescopes located around the main buildings and also international telescopes like Nordic Optical Telescope are in use. The one meter Dall-Kirkham refractor ( [http://www.astro.utu.fi/research/telescopes/metri.htm] ) is the largest optical telescope in Finland.

Research areas

The main area of research in Tuorla are active galactic nuclei while about half of the researchers are working around the topic. Other areas are dark matter, cosmology, astrodynamics, binary stars, local volume, solar physics and astrobiology. Optical laboratory produces high quality optics for telescopes.

See also

*List of astronomical observatories
*Helsinki University Observatory
*Metsähovi Observatory
*Kevola Observatory

References

* [http://www.astro.utu.fi/ Tuorla Observatory home page]
* [http://www.astro.utu.fi/info/history.shtml A short history of the observatory]
* [http://www.fgi.fi/osastot/geodesia/projektit/finnref/docs/tuor.html Position information of the GPS station]


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