Director Yaroslav S. Yatskiv, NAS academician

Founded on July 17, 1944 on the initiative of academician O. Ya. Orlov.

It does research along the following lines:

- positional astronomy and space geodynamics;

- physics of the Sun and solar system bodies;

- physics and evolution of stars and galaxies;

- space plasma physics;

- atmospheric optics;

- astronomical and space instrument-making;

- automation of the processes of astronomical observations and data reducing.

Major achievements and developments:

the Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon has been produced on the basis of ‘Zond-3’ spacecraft data; the FONAK star catalogue has been compiled; the world’s first spectral, photometric and polarimetric devices have been constructed and used to determine physical properties of the atmospheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; academician E. P. Fedorov has proposed the world’s first nutation theory for the model of the absolutely elastic Earth and determined the nutation parameters from observational data; a population of photometric comet models and a physical theory of cometary nuclei have been developed; an automatic telescope-computer complex for the study of the Fraunhofer spectrum of the Sun has been built and enabled researchers to obtain oscillator strengths for about 2000 lines of 49 chemical elements for the first time; the SBS 0335-052 blue compact galaxy with the record-making deficit of heavy elements has been discovered; some unique procedures and software have been developed both for observations of space and astronomical objects and for reducing observational data; a technology for producing multilayer achromatic and superachromatic phase-retarding plates has been developed.