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| Organization | University of Turku | ||||||||
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| Observatory code | 63 | ||||||||
| Location | Piikkiö,Finland | ||||||||
| Coordinates | 60°24′57″N22°26′36″E / 60.41583°N 22.44333°E /60.41583; 22.44333 | ||||||||
| Altitude | 60.6 metres (199 ft) | ||||||||
| Established | 1952 (1952) | ||||||||
| Website | http://www.astro.utu.fi/ | ||||||||
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  Location of Tuorla Observatory | |||||||||
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Tuorla Observatory is the Department of Astronomy at theUniversity of Turku, southwestFinland.[1] It is the largest astronomical research institute in Finland. Together with theSpace Research Laboratory at the Physics Department of the University of Turku, it forms the Väisälä Institute of Space Physics and Astronomy (VISPA).
Tuorla Observatory was established on April 29, 1952 by professorYrjö Väisälä.[2][3] A new observatory was needed because the oldIso-Heikkilä Observatory close to the centre ofTurku started suffering from heavylight pollution from the nearby city and especially the industrial areas to the south of the observatory. A new place was found in Tuorla, which is one of the small villages in (former)Piikkiö municipality. It is located about 12 kilometres from Turku towardsHelsinki.
The first part of the observatory contained a main building and a 51 meter long tunnel for optical research. Due to the growing size of the department, new parts to it have been built in 1989 and 2002. Starting in 1974, the observatory was part of the Physics Department until 1991 when it became again an independent research institute of the university. In 2009 the observatory merged again with the physics department, and it is now one of the seven laboratories of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Turku.
The observatory has several telescopes located around its main buildings and also uses international telescopes like theNordic Optical Telescope. The one meterDall-Kirkham reflector is the largest optical telescope in Finland.
Since October 2008, theTuorla Planetarium has been operating next to the observatory.
The main area of research in Tuorla isactive galactic nuclei; about half of the researchers are working on the topic. Other areas aredark matter,cosmology,astrodynamics,binary stars, solar neighborhood,solar physics andastrobiology. The optical laboratory (Opteon) produces high quality optics for telescopes. In particular, the main mirror of theESA spacecraftHerschel Space Observatory was ground and polished at Tuorla.
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