Transcript Astronomy

Sternberg Astronomical Institute of
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Festival of Science - 2014
September evening observations + October scientific-popular lectures
SAI MSU is 186 years old .
Now we have more than 150 scientists
Our advantage always was combination of theoretical and observational
investigations. But after the disintegration of the Soviet Union observatories of
MSU in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were nationalized and our students and
scientists almost completely lost the possibility to check their theoretical
predictions by themselves.
This situation has started to change 7 years ago when two large observational
projects were initiated by the University and two of them we will describe in
brief in our talk.
Northern Caucasus mountains observatory of SAI MSU
(40 km southward from Kislovods town)
The main instrument of this observatory is 2,5 meter telescope
equipped with modern detectors of optical and infrared
radiation. Four additional 1-meter class telescope will be also
installed.
We hope to have “the first light” from 2.5 m telescope in the nearest future.
The «environmental niche» of the observatory.
1) There are a dozen of 8-11 m class telescopes in the word,
but typical telescope’s mirrors of Western universities has 2-3
meter in diameter.
2) The telescope is the third largest telescope of Russia
3) Now only we have IR panoramic camera and spectrograph
International collaboration is the main road of science
and we hope that Russia will became a member of ESO.
So the aim of our observatory is to prepare students for future
work at large telescopes.
Two mainstreams of the modern astronomy:
1) Large telescopes with small field of view
2) Robotic wide field telescopes
GLOBAL M A S T E R Robotic Net
(Mobile Astronomical System of the TElescope-Robots)
Scientific goal -- search for all kinds of transients:
optical emission of gamma-ray bursts, supernova
explosion, variable stars, asteroids, cosmic debris etc…
There are more experimental projects
in progress in the institute:
● multi wave band photometric survey onboard of
International Space Station (LIRA-B project)
● new generation of fine guide space sensors
● gravitation wave experiment OGRAN
● the net of gravimetric stations at Northern Caucasus
mountains
ets…
THANK YOU !
Sergei Lamzin, [email protected], +7-916-252-01-53