London's Royal Observatory re-opens after 60 years

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Curtained by smog and light pollution for years, Royal Observatory Greenwich in London will resume its scientific journey after a pause of six decades.

For centuries, the observatory remained a hub for top-notch astronomers and stargazers. The observatory’s photographic department was the first to prove Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity by measuring the bending of light during a total solar eclipse.

Britain’s massive industrialization led to the Great London Smog in 1952. In later years, rapid urbanization brightened the city’s night skies. Both smog and excessively bright sodium street lights made it impossible for researchers to get a clear view of planetary objects and stars, forcing the observatory’s closure in 1957.

A portion of the observatory's building also suffered significant damage during the German bombings during World War II. After decades of ceased operations, the observatory has installed modern telescopes and resumed its scientific activity.

“The telescopes that we’re going to be opening this summer take us back to being a ‘working observatory’ in the sense that we can do research-grade observations, and contribute once again to advancing human knowledge of the universe,” said Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory.

Observatory maintained that technological advancements had helped curb the barriers that drove astronomy away from Greenwich in the middle of the twentieth century.

“Telescope technology has advanced dramatically in the past decade; for example, some filters can block out the colors from the sodium lamps used in street lighting,” the observatory’s official statement said.

Authorities have installed four state-of-the-art telescopes (and one 1.6-inch aperture guiding telescope), collectively called AMAT: the Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope, named after pioneering astronomer and astrophotographer Annie Maunder.

Maunder, the first female employee of the observatory, photographed the Sun and captured the tendrils of its outer atmosphere, the corona, during an eclipse in 1898.

“Compared with the last telescopes at Greenwich considered cutting-edge in their time, the AMAT should be able to replicate nearly all of the functions of pretty much all the historic telescopes that we’ve had on site over those hundreds of years,” Kukula added.

The “first light” – a term assigned to first images captured by a new telescope – “is aesthetically pleasing,” the observatory said. The images captured by AMAT will be available to the public through live-streams and workshops.

[Cover Image: A picture taken through a telescope shows Mercury (black dot at left of center) moving across the face of the sun at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, May 9, 2016. /VCG Photo]