Samarkand Educational Observatory

Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute and Samarkand State University have installed first telescope of the university’s observatory in Samarkand, a native city of Ulugh Beg, Uzbekistan. A Grubb Parsons 48-cm reflecting telescope was dismounted from Maidanak Astronomical Observatory and re-installed at the Samarkand State University observatory. First light at the telescope coincided with the solar eclipse on 29th March 2006.

The Samarkand observatory is the first educational scientific observatory in Uzbekistan, and appears to be the first in all of Central Asia as well. Now not only students of the Samarkand State University, but students and teachers of the universities throughout Uzbekistan will have hands-on access to observations of celestial bodies using a real astronomical instrument.