The Institute of Astronomy of BAS celebrated the 40th anniversary of the National Astronomical Observatory Rozhen with a solemn assembly. The director of the Institute, Prof. Evgeni Semkov, presented the most significant achievements of the scientists over the years and the future projects on which the researchers will work. […]
Scientists from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences took part in the one-day scientific forum "Hello, Space! Bulgaria Calling" which took place on 26 July in Sofia Tech Park. The event culminated in a videoconference with the International Space Station, coordinated by NASA. Pupils from all over the country took part in a competition on most interesting questions for the astronauts from the space station. The initiative was held owing to the joint cooperation of the Atlantic Club of Bulgaria and the National STEM/Space Cluster, with the support of NASA and the US Embassy in Sofia. The aim of the project "Hello, Space! Bulgaria Calling" is to spark the imagination of children, inspiring them to look beyond the Earth's orbit to the Moon, Venus, Mars, as [...]
In the period 12-15 July 2021, Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies /DIAS/, as a partner of the STELLAR project, with the Institute of Astronomy with National Astronomical Observatory "Rozhen" at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IA with NAO-BAS) as coordinator, organized and held an online workshop on "Space Weather, Solar Activity and Data Analysis". 37 Bulgarian and foreign students, PhD students and scientists participated and had the opportunity to gain theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of space weather and learn more about solar activity. Some of the workshop topics were solar radio bursts, solar interaction with planets and interplanetary space and observations of the Sun in the radio range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The programme also included exercises on observational data processing and [...]
April 12 marks the International Day of Cosmonautics, and this year the 60th anniversary of the first manned space flight - the orbital flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The Space Research and Technology Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (SRTI-BAS) has significant achievements in the field of space research through the developed scientific programs and equipment. Our country is the sixth country in the world with an astronaut, whose scientific program is fully prepared by specialists in SRTI-BAS, the third country in the world with two satellites in orbit with all-Bulgarian scientific equipment, also developed by specialists in SRTI-BAS and the third country which created space food. At the moment, on the outside of the hull on board the International Space Station works equipment [...]
Image of comet 2I / Borisov obtained with the VLT telescope. Image credit: ESO New observations made with the participation of a scientist from BAS using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) show that the unique comet 2I / Borisov, which is only the second newly discovered interstellar visitor to our solar system, is one of the most pristine objects that have ever been observed. Astronomers speculate that this comet never passed a star nearby, making it an intact remnant of the cloud of gas and dust from which it formed. Stefano Bagnulo and his colleagues, including Assoc. Prof. Dr. Galin Borisov from the Institute of Astronomy with NAO - BAS, used the FORS2 instrument of the VLT [...]
Forty years since the official opening of the National Astronomical Observatory – Rozhen (NAO Rozhen) will be celebrated on 13 March 2021. In its first years, NAO Rozhen is a scientific astronomical complex of three telescopes: a universal 2-meter telescope for photometric and spectral observations and two smaller telescopes: 50/70-cm Schmidt and 60-cm Cassegrain. The first observations were made on photographic plates, and a high-speed electrophotometer was mounted on the Cassegrain telescope. In the first twenty years of the observatory’s work, more than 10 000 photographs of objects from the solar system, stars and star clusters, distant galaxies and quasars, and thousands spectra of interesting stellar objects were obtained. […]
