Founded jointly with the Meteorological Observatory on April, 7 1887, Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade (AOB) is one of the oldest scientific institutions in Serbia. Check a detailed historical review, an article published in the Publications of the Astronomical Observatory that covers period up to 1998. In 2007 we celebrated the 120th anniversary with a scientific meeting Studying Nature through Centuries. The first publication of the AOB - Annuaire de l'Obs. Astr. Belgrade appeared in 1929, followed by Mémoires de l'Obs. Astr. Belgrade three years later. Today AOB is a publisher of the Serbian Astronomical Journal and the Publications of the Astronomical Observatory.
Among the many directors of the AOB probably internationally the most distinguished for scientific contribution is Milutin Milanković @Wikipedia (1879 - 1958) who headed the Observatory in 1951. Since 2023 this post is occupied by Luka Č. Popović .
Scientific research carried out at the AOB closely followed the trends in the astronomical and astrophysical research of the XX century, from observations of minor planets, comets and double stars and determination of their orbits, stellar photometry, spectroscopy and polarimetry (mostly eruptive stars, cool supergiants and Be stars), spectrography of the Sun and monitoring of the large scale photospheric motions to modelling of line emission in a large variety of astrophysical plasma. Today scientific topic covered by the Staff are:
The research is financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia though a 4-years project grants at the Department for basic research, section Earth sciences. More detailed description of the current (2006-2010) and past research projects you can find in the Science pages.