Vatican Observatory and its Zeiss Refracting Telescope

The Vatican observatory is said to be one of the oldest astronomical telescope observatories in the world.

Before the Vatican observatory, the Papacy built three previous observatories, the Roman College Observatory, the Specula Vaticana, and Observatory of the Capital.

In 1891, this refracting telescope observatory was rebuilt – this time it was constructed on a hill near the St. Peter’s Basilica.

But because of the development and growing population of the City of Rome, its skies became too bright for astronomical studies making it less than ideal for the Vatican Observatory to stay there.

So the Vatican Observatory transferred at the Summer Residence of the Pope located in Castel Gandolfo which is southeast of Rome.

Still the continuing increase brightness of the Roman skies slowly but steadily affected the scientific and astronomical research of the observatory.

Because of this, the Observatory in 1981 built a second an astronomical research group, known as the Vatican Observatory Research Group (VORG), in Arizona, US. The research group is considered one of the best and modern in the world.

The Vatican refracting telescope observatory has one of its major refractor and astronomical telescopes the Zeiss refracting telescope. The Zeiss scope was mounted and made available on the 29th of September 1935.

The aperture of the Zeiss scope is 40 centimeters.

Other important specifications of the Zeiss refracting telescope is the Focal Length which as 600 centimeter and the Image scale which is 34 inches / mm.

Aside from the Zeiss scope, other astronomical telescopes and instruments at the observatory are the Double Astrograph, Schmidt and Lennon Telescopes.