Universitäts-Sternwarte
in Großschwabhausen
Universitäts-Sternwarte in Großschwabhausen
| Information on the location of the observatory: | ||
| Longitude: | E 11° 28' 57'' | 11.48250° |
| Latitude: | N 50° 55' 43'' | 50.92861° |
| Altitude above sea level: | 367 m | |
| IAU/MPC code | 134 | |
Since 1962, the institute has been operating the University Observatory, which is located about 10 kilometres west of Jena on a plateau near the village of Großschwabhausen. The observatory's location offers very good observation conditions for optical Astronomy by Central European standards (SSky ~ 21.3 mag/arcsec²).
The university observatory is equipped with a 90 cm reflector telescope, a 25 cm Cassegrain and a 20 cm refractor from Zeiss Jena.
The 90 cm telescope can be used either as a Schmidt camera with a free aperture of 60 cm or as a Nasmyth telescope with full aperture. The Schmidt telescope camera (STKExternal link) is operated in the Schmidt focus and the fibre-optic coupled Échelle spectrograph FLECHASExternal link in the Nasmyth focus of the 90 cm telescope.
Two further CCD cameras are available on the 25 cm Cassegrain (CTK-IIExternal link) and the 20 cm refractor (RTKExternal link) for night-time observations.
On every clear night, the instruments at the university observatory are used for astronomical research. In addition to its research activities, the observatory also provides students at the University of Jena with practical training in Astronomy.