Stockholm Observatory [Stockholms Observatorium] is beautifully located in the archipelago 18 km southeast of Stockholm. The Research Station for Astrophysics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences [Kungliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademien - KVA] is also located at Stockholm Observatory. The scientific staff, during 1999, included five professors, eight associate professors and senior researchers, one university lecturer, seven research associates and four postdoctoral fellows. About 1/3 of the staff is of foreign nationality.
At Stockholm Observatory observational, theoretical and experimental work is carried out. The fields of research include the interstellar medium and star formation, young stars and planetary systems, solar physics, AGB-stars and planetary nebulae, supernovae, galactic structure and dynamics, observational cosmology, high energy astrophysics, as well as infra-red equipment development. Stockholm Observatory has access to all European Southern Observatory (ESO) instruments, the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), the Swedish solar telescope on La Palma, the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) and the Onsala telescopes, and European Space Agency (ESA) projects such as Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), the astrometry satellite HIPPARCOS, X-ray Multimirror Mission (XMM). Other instruments, such as the Keck telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA) the Australia Telescope (AT), the IRAM PdB mm-wave interferometer as well as the space based Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO), the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA), and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) are also extensively used.
The scientists of the Stockholm Observatory are also actively involved in
the development of future space missions such as Odin (Swedish
submillimetre space telescope), ESA's INTEGRAL (International Gamma-Ray
Astrophysics Laboratory), DARWIN (infra-red space interferometer), GLAST
(Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope), EXTRA (Experiment for X-ray Timing
and Relativistic Astrophysics, a 10m
X-ray telescope), and Ballerina (a
Danish gamma-ray burst mission).