Modern · Kitob District
Kitab International Latitude Station
The observatory that tracked the wobble of the Earth’s pole
Modern · Qamashi District
Maidanak High-Altitude Observatory
An astronomical observatory founded in 1970 on the western plateau of Mount Maidanak, run by the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute.
History
The astronomer V. S. Shevchenko noticed the site’s exceptional astroclimate in 1967, and in 1970 the Astronomical Institute of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences set up a permanent expedition here. Early studies found the seeing to be better than one arcsecond 80 per cent of the time. Moscow University and Lithuanian astronomers later built observing bases on the mountain. Today the observatory belongs to the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute, with its main base at the latitude station in Kitob.
In 1980 the mountain’s eastern summit was handed to the military and all civilian astronomy moved to the western summit; in February 1993 the observatory’s equipment became the property of Uzbekistan. Research here has covered young and variable stars and gravitational lenses.