Related papers: Boscovich and the Brera Observatory
The first idea of establishing a public astronomical observatory in Florence, Capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, dates to the mid of the 18th century. Initially, the use of a low building on a high ground was proposed, and the hill of…
In Northern Italy, between 1796 and 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte formed a Republic, and then a Kingdom, controlled by France. Milan was the capital of the State, and the Brera Palace was the main cultural centre, as regards both the arts and…
The page written by the astronomer Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) and containing the data of the 1701 winter solstice observed at Santa Maria degli Angeli is presented for the first time in figure 2 and widely discussed along this paper.…
The great meridian line in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome was built in 1701/1702 with the scope of measuring the obliquity of the Earth's orbit in the following eight centuries, upon the will of Pope Clement XI. During the…
In 1953 I heard of an experiment in 1925 by Bengt Str\"omgren where he observed transit times with the meridian circle at the Copenhagen University Observatory measuring the current in a photocell behind slits when a star was crossing. In…
About fifty years after the work that astronomer Tycho Brahe carried out while living on the island of Hven had made him world famous, King Christian IV of Denmark built the Trinity Buildings in Copenhagen. The Tower observatory was opened…
Sunspot observations and counting are carried out at the Specola Solare Ticinese in Locarno since 1957 when it was built as an external observing station of the Zurich observatory. When in 1980 the data center responsibility was transferred…
This work addresses the development of the astronomical observatory all through history, from an architectural point of view, as a building in relation to the observing instruments and their functioning as a heterogeneous work center. We…
Specola Solare Ticinese is an observatory dedicated to Sunspot Number counting, which was constructed in 1957 in Locarno, Southern Switzerland, as an external observing station of the Zurich Federal Observatory. When in 1981 the…
One of the mayor topics in astronomy at the beginning of the 19th century was the interpretation of the observations of the first asteroids. In 1810 Christian Ludwig Gerling at the age of twenty two came to G\"ottingen University to…
The largest centre for astronomical and astrological study in the fifteenth century was the University of Cracow, which always was under special care of Jagiellonians. The use of astronomy and astrology at Jagiellonian courts in the…
In the late 1620s the Neapolitan telescope maker Francesco Fontana was the first to observe the sky using a telescope with two convex lenses, which he had manufactured himself. Fontana succeeded in drawing the most accurate maps of the…
A translation of a section from the 1665 Astronomia Reformata of G. B. Riccioli discussing the appearance of the disk of Jupiter during the years 1630-1664; changes in the Jovian cloud belts as recorded by a variety of observers are a major…
Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) ordered Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729) to build a Meridian Line. Bianchini was the Secretary of the Commission for the Calendar. He chose the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli because of the stability of its…
The XXXI European Symposium on Occultation Projects will be celebrated in ICRANet center of Pescara from 24 to 27 August 2012 (www.icranet.org/clavius2012). The occasion is the fourth centennial of the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius…
The year 2012 will be the fourth centennial year of the Jesuit Christopher Clavius (1535-1612), known as the Euclid of XVI century and the collaborator of the Pope Gregory XIII for the calendar reformation. In the occasion of the year of…
This is a personal account of how I became an astronomer. Fascinated by the stars and planets in the dark sky over Lolland, an island 100 km south of Copenhagen, the interest in astronomy was growing. Encouraged by my teachers, I polished…
Giovanni Battista Benedetti (1530--1590) derived two constructions of ovals given their minor and major axes. These were published in 1585 and seem to be the first solution to this problem. Therefore, the generally accepted view that ``the…
Ancient instruments of high interest for research on the origin and diffusion of early scientific devices in the late XVI - early XVII centuries are reproduced in three paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder. We investigated the nature and the…
The Milanese period in Albert Einstein's life is a key one for the understanding of the development of his scientific questioning. While being a student in Z\"urich from 1896, Einstein returned regularly to Milan to meet his family for the…