The village where astrophysicists work is called Scientific. The TASS correspondent went there to find out what to do when "there is no sky", and why astronomers now do not wear white coats.
600 meters above sea level, the middle ridge of the Crimean mountains, a green forest carpet, among which, like white champignon hats, the domes of tower telescopes look out. This is the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, located in the Bakhchisarai region.
Astrophysical scientists have been working here for more than 70 years, discovering new planets and asteroids, in search of extraterrestrial life. About why modern astrologers do not wear caps and white coats, how to discover more than a thousand asteroids with the help of a telescope, and why it was necessary to “shoot” the moon with a laser - in the report of a TASS correspondent.
100 Steps to the Stars
Exactly 100. This is exactly how much you have to go to see the stars. The staircase is twisted into a spiral, which makes it seem like you are in an old castle.
The spiral leads to the platform in the tower, where one of the largest telescopes in Russia, named after Academician G. A. Shain, the first director of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in the late 1940s - early 1950s.
Mirror telescope them. G. A. Shaina / Ruslan Shamukov / TASS.
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The tower rises 15 meters above the ground - about the size of a five-story building. Leading engineer of the telescope, Evgeny Nekhai, and I, having climbed the stairs, stand on the narrow technical observation deck of the telescope dome. He gets up quite cheerfully, says that he walks like that several times a day.
Below us is the green expanse of the forest and the towers of more than a dozen telescopes of the observatory.
“The telescope has been under construction for several years. In 1954, an order was received for its construction, and already in 1960, the first photographs were received,”says Nekhai.
The telescope tower is just over two-thirds above the ground, and its foundation extends another 10 meters into the ground. In addition, under the telescope, a 20-meter massive reinforced concrete pile is driven in, which, when the 240-ton dome rotates, ensures stability from any vibrations and guarantees clarity and accuracy of images when observing celestial bodies.
The weight of the telescope installed in the dome of the tower is 105 tons, the movable part is 62 tons, it is placed on a thin, 100 micron oil cushion, for smooth and balanced rotation. And this colossus is powered by an electric motor with a power of only 50 W, which is almost 40 times less than the power of a household hair dryer.
Over a century of observations
The Crimean Observatory, although it was created in 1945, traces its history from the beginning of the century - from the Simeiz branch, opened on the southern coast of Crimea as a branch of the Pulkovo Observatory in 1908. It is no coincidence that one of the asteroids discovered in Simeiz in 1913 bears the name Pulkovo: this name was given in honor of the head observatory.
The scientific secretary of the Crimean Observatory, Alexander Baklanov, said that during the war, during the occupation of the peninsula, the Nazis took equipment and a telescope from Simeiz to Germany, where they were found by Soviet soldiers at the end of the war, but already damaged. Unfortunately, neither the telescope nor the rest of the scientific equipment was restored.
Telescope towers of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences / Sergey Malgavko / TASS.
After the war, the USSR received two German telescopes made by Carl Zeiss for reparations, and one of them, 1916, is one of the oldest in Europe, on the second, 1944, the most famous discoveries of scientists were made.
Now the observatory has 15 telescopes, they are located both in the Bakhchisarai region and in the southern coastal villages of Simeiz and Katsiveli, where a powerful 22-meter radio telescope is located.
“With their help, we observe almost all objects in space. From very close, near-earth space, to distant quasars: comets, asteroids, stars and galaxies, says Baklanov. "For understanding, this is from the order of several hundred kilometers to tens of billions of light years."
Pushkin with Chkalov in space
Scientists believe that it was research in the Crimea that allowed astrophysics to develop. For example, with the help of one of the German telescopes, which was the first to be installed at the observatory near Bakhchisarai, the astrophysicists of the Chernykh spouses discovered 1280 asteroids and comets. Many of them received the names of famous personalities and localities: Pushkin, Gogol, Suvorov, Chkalov, Korolev, Gagarin, Bakhchisarai, Crimea, Ukraine.
With the help of the second telescope, says Alexei Sosnovsky, a researcher at the observatory, also received from the Babelsberg Observatory on reparations, the entire classification of stars was built, telling about their evolution. It is generally accepted that it was with him that modern domestic astrophysics began.
Schein's telescope is also remarkable. A laser was installed on its axis, which "fired" at the surface of the Moon in the first half of the 1970s, when there was a Soviet lunar rover with a reflector. According to the speed of passage of a beam of light back and forth, Baklanov says, for the first time, the distance to the Moon was determined with an accuracy of 25 cm.
Alexey Sosnovsky and Alexey Baklanov / Sergey Malgavko / TASS.
In 1957, when the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite, the preparation of the launch and partial control lay with the scientists of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, as well as control over the flight of Yuri Gagarin.
The OST-1 orbital solar telescope, developed at the observatory, was mounted in 1974 at the Soviet Salyut-4 orbital station. A special model of the telescope was also created in the KrAO, on which cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Alexei Gubarev, Vitaly Sevastyanov and Pyotr Klimuk came to train.
With the help of OST-1, the scientific secretary says, more than 600 ultraviolet spectra of active formations on the Sun and over 2 thousand of its images were obtained.
Will UFOs arrive?
Astronomical mirror telescope AZT-11 is the most notable among its technical counterparts at the observatory. With its help, as Sosnovsky said, double stars and exoplanets - celestial bodies where life could theoretically exist - are being studied.
“It's very simple,” says Alexey. “To do this, you just need to find planets near stars similar to the Sun, which is not very bright, where there is not much radiation, water and oxygen are possible.”
However, this will not happen in a year or even in a century, if at all.
There is one more not very pleasant news for fans of extraterrestrial civilizations: a star, in orbit of which a planet similar to ours may be located, is very far from Earth. A message sent to such a planet will travel about 800 light-years, and the answer, if there is intelligent life, will travel the same amount. There is also a theory according to which the existence of two civilizations simultaneously, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, is unlikely.
Telescope AZT-11 / Sergey Malgavko / TASS.
Sosnovskiy, who sometimes runs summer excursions for numerous tourists, says everyone is asking about the same thing.
“There are UFOs or not, have we seen them - the most popular questions,” the scientist smiles. “We answer that we cannot disclose this, as the information is classified.”
No caps and robes
Another of the questions that visitors are actively interested in is why astronomers do not work in caps and white coats.
“This is such an image, a stereotype, if you like,” Baklanov connects to our conversation, “you can only see it on old engravings or, say, in a movie. In fact, this image is far from reality."
Each tower has special rooms for scientists. None of them looks into eyepieces for a long time. For this, there is high-precision digital equipment. For example, CCDs, as on modern cameras, but with a higher resolution, fixing and concentrating light, which is then decomposed into the colors of the spectrum with an analysis of the physical and chemical properties of a celestial object.
BST-1 (large solar telescope) / Sergey Malgavko / TASS.
The office is usually located in the tower, on the same platform as the telescope. It is equipped with computers, television screens, and sensors to display research data. The observer, that is the name of the position of the researcher conducting the research, controls the telescope itself, receives data on the position of the observed object, the direction of the telescope, and the state of the matrix. Data on this every 10-20 minutes are recorded in the stellar logbook.
“Astrophysicists have this expression: when the weather is cloudy, we say 'there is no sky,'” says Sosnovsky. “This means that there will be no research. In the coming days, the weather promises to improve. So the sky will be there, and research will be continued."
About the observatory
The main part of the observatory is located 600 meters above sea level. It has 17 optical telescopes, including the second largest optical telescope in Russia - this is the Shain telescope, 2.6 meters, the first in Europe and so far the only working second-generation gamma-ray telescope equipped with a photopolarimeter.
The tower of the Shine mirror telescope / Sergey Malgavko / TASS.
The Solar Physics Laboratory studies solar activity, flares, magnetic field and their effect on space objects, including the Earth.
Sergey Paviv