HENCEFORTH BYURAKAN OBSERVATORY WILL FOLLOW GALAXIES THROUGH THE PRISM OF PHOTOELECTRIC RECEIVER

ArmInfo News Agency, Armenia
Nov 2 2006

In spring 2007, the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory of the
Armenian National Academy of Sciences, jointly with the Special
Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Scientists, will
start implementing a joint program of exploiting a meter Schmidt
telescope, one of the largest in the world, Deputy Director of the
Byurakan Observatory Norayr Melikyan told an ArmInfo correspondent.

According to him, the Russian side gave $250 thousand for installing
the photoelectric receiver. The observatory followed photographic
methods which have become obsolete. In fact, with the new receiver
the Byurakan Observatory will be able to receive 4 times as much
information of 4 thousand pixels on a 4 cm snapshot. He noted that
due to the lack of up-to-date receivers in the observatory, out
of 5 telescopes only one is used at the moment. At the same time,
the observatory gets a lot of offers to cooperate with a number of
countries. Particularly, cooperation agreements are signed with Italy,
France and the observatory in the city of Santiago de Compostella,
Spain. It also has many offers to research problems of stellar
astronomy, galaxies’ structure, non-stationary stars and nebulae,
stellar cosmology, as well as to do radio-astronomical observations.

To note, the Byurakan Observatory established in 1946 on Aragats,
the highest mountain in Armenia, discovered and studied flashing
stars, particularly, in the Seven Sisters, and discovered galaxies
with superfluous ultraviolet radiation. The prosperity period of the
Armenian astronomy is connected with the name of Victor Hambardzumyan,
a famous Armenian scientist. The results of scientific researches
by Byurakan have obtained international recognition and formed a
basis for new directions in astrophysics. However, during the last
15 years, the number of observatory’s employees has decreased 4
times. The young employees receive a salary at the minimum rate –
15 thousand AMD (about $39).