Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl

The Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl, or Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory, is a historic astronomical observatory located near the summit of the Königstuhl hill, in the city of Heidelberg in Germany. The predecessor of the current observatory was originally opened in 1774 in the nearby city of Mannheim, but degradation of observation conditions there resulted in a relocation to the Königstuhl in 1898.de]

The observatory forms part of the Center of Astronomy of the University of Heidelberg. The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy opened on an adjacent site in 1967.de]

As of 2006, the current director is Andreas Quirrenbach.

History

The instrumentation of the observatory originally come from the Mannheim Observatory, founded in 1774. Because of worsening seeing conditions, the observatory was provisionally moved to Karlsruhe in 1880. In the subsequent time, three other locations were considered from which Königstuhl was decided on.

On 20 June 1898 the "Großherzogliche Bergsternwarte" was ceremonially inaugurated by Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden. The astronomical institute comprised two complementary departments, the astrophysical of Max Wolf and the astrometrical of Karl Wilhelm Valentiner. Valentiner was director of the Mannheimer observatory and initiated the move to Karlsruhe. After Valentiner's retirement in 1909, both departments were joined under the administration of Max Wolf.

After his call to the Bergsternwarte, Max Wolf was able to find private sponsors, among these Catherine Wolfe Bruce for the acquisition of new, powerful telescopes.

The main field of activity of the observatory was the investigation of nebulae and the search for asteroids. Wolf, his staff and his successors found over 800 asteroids, including the first discovered trojan asteroid Achilles in 1906.

The observatory ceased to be an institute of the German federal state in 2005, when it was joined together with the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics and Astronomical Calculation Institute to make up the Center of Astronomy of the University of Heidelberg.

Between 1912 and 1957, Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth discovered almost 400 asteroids whilst working from the Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl.

See also

*List of observatories

References

External links

* [http://www.lsw.uni-heidelberg.de/ Official web site of the observatory] (in mixed German/English)