Kitab International Latitude Station

History

M. F. Subbotin proposed the station in 1925 and A. N. Nefedyev became its first director. Observations began in 1929 and the station officially opened on 14 November 1930 as one of five latitude stations on the 39°08′ N parallel that jointly tracked the position of the Earth’s pole. In autumn 1941 staff of the Simeiz Observatory in Crimea were evacuated here, and G. N. Neujmin named one of his minor-planet discoveries (1351) Uzbekistania. In 1985–1986 the station’s telescopes recorded 540 precise positions of Halley’s Comet, the most of any of 104 participating observatories. Since 1998 it has been the geodynamics department of the Astronomical Institute.