Sternwarte Tübingen

Sternwarte Tübingen, on the Waldhäuser Höhe above Tübingen, Germany, houses a telescope with a history older than the building itself - a 30-centimetre refractor first commissioned by the Nobel laureate Carl Bosch in the 1920s.

About Sternwarte Tübingen

Sternwarte Tübingen is a public observatory at 470 metres elevation on the Waldhäuser Höhe, built in 1955/56. Since the University of Tübingen moved its Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics elsewhere in 2001, the building has belonged to the city and the observatory has been run by the volunteer group Astronomische Vereinigung Tübingen.

History

Tübingen's astronomical tradition goes back roughly 500 years, to the appointment of Johannes Stöffler as the university's first astronomy teacher in 1507. The observatory's centrepiece telescope has its own long story: a 30-centimetre achromatic refractor with a 5-metre focal length, built by Carl Zeiss Jena and delivered in 1925 after being commissioned in 1924 by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Carl Bosch for his private observatory in Heidelberg. It was ceremonially transferred to Tübingen in the early 1950s and is now the last preserved example of this particular telescope design in Germany.

Location & getting there

The observatory sits at 470 metres on the Waldhäuser Höhe above Tübingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Use the map and directions button on this page to find the way up.

Visiting Sternwarte Tübingen

The Astronomische Vereinigung Tübingen runs a full weekly programme: lectures on Fridays, star tours on Saturday evenings, and solar observation sessions on Sundays. Check the official website for exact times before visiting.

See your named star from here

Every star named through Star Register comes with precise right ascension and declination coordinates, which the volunteers here can point their historic Zeiss refractor towards on a clear Saturday night. Browse the star catalogue or start a naming through our packages before your visit.