From the Stars to Romania’s Time. School Different at the Astronomical Institute

Between 20–24 October 2025, roughly 400 participants—schoolchildren and teachers—explored the cultural-educational spaces of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy. The itinerary began in the Meridian Hall, where, historically, the transit of stars across the local meridian was measured and logged with high precision. The centerpiece, the Gautier-Prin meridian telescope —preserved today as a national treasure—captured everyone’s attention and sparked a cascade of questions. The audience discovered how this instrument worked together with the fundamental Leroy and Riefler pendulum clocks to mark stellar passages across the reticle wires and refine stellar catalogues. Regarded as fundamental research, these observations required computing in Bucharest an extremely stable time base from which, for decades, Romanian astronomers derived Romania’s official time. To their surprise, many realized they were standing exactly in the scientific facility where this was calculated and reported daily for the entire country.

The cultural tour continued with an exhibition of mechanical and electromechanical calculating machines as well as the first electronic computers, used at the Bucharest Astronomical Observatory for data reduction, applying corrections, and other scientific computations. The outcome of this scientific rigor and the work of Romanian astronomers was a new generation of catalogues with verified stellar positions and numerous astronomy studies published at home and abroad. Thus, students saw that science means measuring, comparing, and correcting: by tracking Earth’s rotation—our most reliable “clock”—against the stars, we determine time.

In the Planetarium Room, demonstrations of modern software—freely available to amateur astronomers—shifted the discussion from the history of Romanian astronomy to advances in contemporary technologies. The guided walk through the Institute’s scientific and educational park also included the Solar Dome, one of Romania’s scientific facilities from which our nearest star, the Sun, is monitored every day.

Published on: Nov 03, 2025