On friday March 4, at the Univers Astronomical Center of the Montsec Astronomical Park the new exhibition “Telescopi Assumpció Català” will be inaugurated.
The Assumpció Català telescope will be the first telescope in Spain bearing the name of a woman.
Maria Assumpció Català i Poch was the first woman astronomer numerary professor in a spanish university. She worked as a professor at the University of Barcelona from 1953 to 1990 and in 2004 was named honorary emeritus professor. Her research focused on the study of the solar system, astrometry and galactic astronomy.
The inauguration of the exhibition takes place on the occasion of the “baptism” of the new telescope, a Dall-Kirkham reflector with a diameter of 50 cm, located in the new classsroom observatory of the Centre d’Observació de l’Univers. The classroom observatory has a circular structure and eight screens connected to the telescope that enable seventy sitting people the simultaneous observation of the Montsec sky.
The exhibition has fourteen panels that explain who Assumpció Català was, which her research fields were and how they evolved. They also inform the characteristics of the telescope and describe what the Parc Astronòmic Montsec is.
The elaboration of the contents of the exhibition has been made by members of the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology at the University of Barcelona, of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) and of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).
Published by www.icc.ub.edu 04/03/2016.
Related links:
Telescopio ‘Assumpció Català’: el primero con nombre de mujer (in spanish) here
Visit online digital exhibition here