Pic du Midi Observatory

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Pic du Midi Observatory

 

a French scientific institution located in the Pyrenees near the summit of the Pic du Midi. Founded in 1881 as a meteorological observatory, it became affiliated with the University of Toulouse in 1903. Its chief instruments are 38-cm twin and 60-cm refracting telescopes, 102-cm and 200-cm (under construction) reflecting telescopes, and 20-cm twin and 26-cm coronagraphs. Its areas of research include the photographing of the planets, the moon, and binary stars with high—up to 0.2”—angular resolution and of the surface of the sun with resolution up to 0.3”, observations of the solar corona outside of eclipses, the construction of astronomical instruments, and atmospheric optics.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.