About
The Astronomical and Geophysical observatory of Comenius University is located near the town of Modra and in the mountain range of Little Carpathians. The 3.5-hectare area contains several buildings and scientific instruments surrounded by beech forest. It lies on the middle trias quartzitic bedrock. It is accessible via a tourist trail or by the private paved road from Zochova chata. The main administrative building with the dome on the top contains the 0.60-metre Zeiss telescope with CCD camera and the 0.20-metre solar telescope with H-alpha filter. Within walking distance there are several buildings and pavilions with scientific devices, such as the magnetic pavilion (measurement of the Earth magnetic field), the seismic cell with the seismograph, the solar telescope dome, the dome with the Schumann resonances registration device and the meteor pavilion of photographic and video meteor detection. The upper building with the 5-metre dome has a small telescope for educational purposes and registration devices for GPS and forward scatter meteor radar of the Bologna-Lecce-Modra network (transceiver-receiver-receiver). The lower building, standing next to the pond, has a small convention center and housing facility for guests. Since 1988, continuous weather and meteorological observations are done. and the data provide a unique and homogenous climate record of the site. Further planned development of the observatory involves the building of an open-air amphitheatre.
Read more about this topic: Modra Observatory