Belogradchik Observatory

Worth a detour

It began in 1961 as the country's first school observatory, put together by a local physics teacher, and it is now one of the two stations of the Institute of Astronomy. The 60 cm Zeiss it received in 1969 was the second-largest telescope in Bulgaria when it went in. What makes it worth the walk is that it is a real research site rather than a visitor attraction, and the dark here is properly dark.

Story

Background

Hristo Kostov, who taught physics in the town, started the observatory in 1961, and for its first years it was the only school observatory in Bulgaria. Through the 1960s and into the mid-1970s the Institute of Astronomy used the site as a base for tracking artificial satellites, and from 1976 took it over completely. It is now one of the institute's two observing stations, the other being the national observatory at Rozhen in the Rhodopes.

Three instruments sit under three domes. The original is a 15 cm Zeiss Cassegrain. The 60 cm Zeiss Cassegrain went into a six-metre dome in 1969, and when it did it was the second-largest telescope in the country; it is still the working instrument here. A 14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain was added in 1994 in a smaller dome built earlier. The programme is ordinary professional astrophysics rather than outreach, which is why visits run on the staff's terms and not the visitor's.

Daytime visits show the instruments, the domes and images of what the place has recorded. Night sessions, arranged in advance and cancelled by cloud without apology, put you on the eyepiece — the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, brighter deep-sky objects. It stands a few minutes' walk from the fortress gate, so it costs no extra journey, only an extra evening.