KARL-SCHWARZSCHILD OBSERVATORIUM - OBSERVATOIRE KARL-SCHWARZSCHILD

Located about 10 km northeast of Jena, and benefiting from a very honourable sky, this prestigious observatory houses a 2 m diameter telescope, one of the largest in continental Europe! The idea of building a large telescope in Germany had been around for a long time. In fact, the relations between some of the great names in German astronomy and the managers of the Zeiss Jena factory, a prestigious optical manufacturer that is still very active today, only reinforced the motivation for its construction. In 1939, the astronomer Hans Kienle, in a famous speech to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, officially asked to start its construction. However, it took about ten years - the war having passed - for the financing of such a project to be definitively adopted. The diameter chosen for this telescope was then enormous for the time: 2 m! An instrument jewel whose manufacture was logically to be entrusted to Zeiss. The site selected for its location had yet to be defined, with the obligation to respect some essential and unavoidable points: the absence of light pollution, maximum transparency of the sky, and an absence of seismic risk! It is therefore the current site of Tautenburg that was chosen, with a very pretty and pleasant setting (a mixture of countryside and wooded areas). At the end of 1957, construction of the complex began, and the observatory was inaugurated on 19 October 1960. It was named Karl Schwarzschild Observatory, in homage to this German astrophysicist, to whom we owe in particular great advances in the photographic field, as well as a famous formula (for experienced photographers) reflecting the evolution of the sensitivity of a photographic film according to the exposure time applied. Today, when we discover this telescope, we are impressed by its respectable dimensions: with its 65 tons and its 20 m wide dome displaying 180 tons on the scale, there is enough to be captivated by this vision.