Mount Suhora Observatory

Mount Suhora Observatory sits inside Gorce National Park in southern Poland, on Mount Suhora roughly 50 kilometres south of Kraków, where the Pedagogical University of Cracow has run it since the late 1980s.

About Mount Suhora Observatory

Known in Polish as Obserwatorium astronomiczne na Suhorze, the site is owned and operated by the Astronomy department of the Pedagogical University of Cracow, serving as both a teaching facility and an active research observatory.

History

The observatory was established on 5 November 1987, giving the university's astronomy department a dedicated dark-sky site within the protected landscape of the Gorce Mountains.

Telescopes & research

Its main instrument is a 0.6-metre Cassegrain telescope, equipped with a photometer and a CCD camera, supporting the photometric research and student training carried out by the university's astronomy staff.

Location & getting there

Sitting within Gorce National Park about 50 kilometres south of Kraków, the observatory benefits from the national park's protected, low-light-pollution surroundings, a rarity for a university observatory this close to a major city.

Visiting Mount Suhora Observatory

As a working university facility inside a national park, visiting arrangements are best checked directly with the Pedagogical University of Cracow's astronomy department before making the trip out from Kraków.

See your named star from here

The dark skies of Gorce National Park make Mount Suhora's 0.6-metre telescope a serious instrument for tracking down faint objects, including the coordinates of a symbolically named star. Name a star or explore the star catalogue.