Press Release

NAS RA V. Ambartsumian Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO)
Press release 05.08.2021

BYURAKAN ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY’S UNESCO HERITAGE ITEM MARKS ITS 10TH ANNIVERSARY

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory’s (BAO) UNESCO Heritage Item. On 5 August, a seminar was held at BAO on this special occasion at which Director of BAO Areg Mickaelian presented a report titled “10 years of the UNESCO heritage item of the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory".

The First Byurakan Survey (FBS or Markarian survey) was accepted in the UNESCO “Memory of the World” international register documentary heritage items in 2011.

It was created at BAO and is the only scientific heritage UNESCO item in Armenia and one of the rare scientific heritage UNESCO items in the world.

The First Byurakan Survey (FBS or Markarian survey) contains the records of a unique astronomical survey carried out at BAO by the great Armenian astronomer Beniamin Markarian and his colleagues in 1965-1988. The survey involved the largest ever astronomical spectroscopic study of the nearby universe and is considered as one of the most important achievements of the 20th century astrophysics. It provides data on 40,000,000 low dispersion spectra for 20,000,000 objects. The records were carried out on BAO 1m Schmidt telescope. They cover the whole Northern Sky and part of the Southern Sky at high galactic latitudes and some part in the Milky Way areas. The FBS was conducted originally for search of galaxies with UV-excess (UVX). The discovery of 1515 UVX galaxies by Markarian and colleagues (later called Markarian galaxies) was the first and the most important work based on the FBS plates.

The survey was digitized in 2002-2007 by Areg Mickaelian and his team and the Digitized First Byurakan Survey (DFBS) was created, the largest low-dispersion spectroscopic database in the world, and the first digitization project in Armenia in all spheres (https://www.aras.am//Dfbs/dfbs.html).

Visit our website, to learn about the whole list of UNESCO items in Armenia: https://www.bao.am/about/unesco/unesco.php

Meline Asryan