Ondřejov Observatory
The Ondřejov Observatory (; ) is the principal observatory of the Astronomical Institute () of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It is located near the village of Ondřejov,  southeast of Prague, Czech Republic. It has a  wide telescope, which is the largest in the Czech Republic. History
The facility was constructed in 1898, by Czech amateur astronomer and entrepreneur Josef Jan Frič as a private observatory. On 28 October 1928, he donated the facility to the Czechoslovak state to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its independence. The observatory, located at an altitude of , away from the air and light pollution of urban Prague, was administered by Charles University until the founding of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1953, which from then on operated it as part of its Astronomical Institute in conjunction with other Czechoslovak observatories. In 1967, a telescope measuring  in width was added to the observatory, which at that time was the 7th largest telescope in the world. Now it is the largest telescope in the Czech Republic and is in the second hundred in the world. It has been responsible, among other scientific achievements, for the discovery of numerous asteroids; more recent works of astronomers from Ondřejov include examination of the trajectory and origin of the Chelyabinsk meteor. More than 700 minor planets have been discovered at this observatory. While most of these discoveries are officially credited to the astronomers who discovered them, a remaining 23 minor planets are directly credited to "Ondrejov" (the observatory itself) by the Minor Planet Center for the period 1997–2008. The main-belt asteroid 7204 Ondřejov, discovered by Petr Pravec in 1995, was named for the village where the observatory is located. List of discovered minor planets

Gallery

See also 
 Astronomical Institute of Czech Academy of Sciences
 List of asteroid-discovering observatories
 List of astronomical observatories
 
 List of observatory codes

References

External links 
 
 Astronomical Institute, responsible for the observatory
 Photos of the observatory
 News from Ondřejov Photometric Program
 Numbered asteroids discovered at Ondřejov, 1 June 2018

1898 establishments in Austria-Hungary
Astronomical observatories in the Czech Republic

Minor-planet discovering observatories
Buildings and structures in Prague-East District