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Astrophysics in the snow

A FORGOTTEN jewel in the crown of Soviet
astronomy, the Byurakan Astrophysical
Observatory is located on the picturesque
southern slope of Mount Aragats, a four-peaked
volcano massif in Armenia.
Much of the mountain (top, left) once lay in
the permanent grip of ice. Glaciers inside its crater
weren’t discovered until after the second world
war. Since then, the snow line has risen and
sheep herders have abandoned the mountain’s
waterlogged environs. Photographer Toby Smith,
on assignment for Project Pressure, a charity
documenting the world’s vanishing glaciers,
also recorded the lives of those who remain on
the mountain.
Several are astronomers. As well as renting
their antiquated equipment (bottom, right) to
international teams, they run an underfunded
research station near the lip of the crater whose
detectors measure cosmic rays (top, middle).
They are proud of their heritage. The
observatory was founded and built in 1946 by
Viktor Ambartsumian, who survived Stalin’s
notorious purges of Pulkovo Observatory to
become an internationally celebrated pioneer
of astrophysics. He and his colleagues began
work even before the observatory buildings
(bottom, left) were finished. “Our instruments
stood under the open sky, covered with tarpaulin,”
Ambartsumian once recalled. He set his students,
armed only with modest telescopes, the task of
producing the first structural survey of the galaxy.
In 1958, he caused a furore when he predicted
that massive non-stellar objects sat at the centre
of galaxies. He turned out to be right.
After the Soviet Union’s break-up in 1991, the
observatory fell on hard times, but Ambartsumian
went on living near the facility and continued
conducting experiments there until his death in
1996. His room, also pictured, has become
something of a shrine. Simon Ings

Photographer
Toby Smith
Getty Reportage

20 January 2018 | NewScientist | 27