Astronomers said no

Pulkovo Observatory spoke out in defense of Russian science

Last Friday, the Academic Council of the Main (Pulkovo) Astronomical Observatory (GAO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences decided to refuse approval for the construction of a residential complex.

“Planetograd”, a residential complex, which, according to the developer, should be located directly outside the observatory fence, if implemented, would put an end to half of the research being carried out at the State Administrative District.

The Planetograd project, a huge residential complex, has been developed by the Israeli company Morgal Investments Ltd. since 2007. The majority of the site - 167 out of 240 hectares - is going to be built by the large St. Petersburg developer Setl City, Maxim Shubarev, in exchange for a share of apartments. The total cost of the project is more than 200 billion rubles.

Preliminary consent for the implementation of “Planetograd” was received from Georgy Poltavchenko. According to unconfirmed information, the governor was misled by saying that all approvals had already been received, although the GAO did not give its permission.

Documents on the project were received by the observatory only this year. Moreover, according to the acting director of the State Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri Nagovitsyn, the quality of the submitted documentation leaves much to be desired. As a result, having sorted out the papers, astronomers determined that the implementation of the project was incompatible with the scientific activities of the observatory. Light pollution, steam and dust that distort the light of the stars will make observations impossible. As a result, the scientific council decided to refuse approval. Now the acting director is obliged to formalize the will of the board with his decision.

It is clear that it is difficult to fight a project with so much money behind it. “But the observatory has no other choice,” Nagovitsyn told Novaya. – So far they haven’t put any pressure on us. But we do not exclude that they will try to exert pressure, taking advantage of gaps in the legislation.”

“Since 2008, several dozen projects within our three-kilometer protective park zone have been submitted to us for approval,” explained Alexander Stepanov, scientific director and former director of the State Administrative Okrug. “We rejected most of them, and only agreed on five or six. However, even those that are agreed upon often do not fulfill the conditions of the agreements, that is, they worsen the astroclimate. Now we are starting to fight this: first, we are preparing a letter to BigBox LLC (Ryady shopping center) with a demand to change the lighting of the building so that it meets the requirements specified in our approval. If they refuse to meet us halfway, we will contact the prosecutor’s office.”

When asked why the observatory did not begin to fight the developers who deceived them earlier, Alexander Stepanov replied: “The first such episode took place with the reconstruction of the Pulkovo highway. Violations became apparent in 2009–2010. However, at that moment this did not seem to be a serious problem to astronomers. It became really acute when the new meter-long Saturn telescope was launched, which makes observations at low angles, near the horizon.”

However, the head of the astrometry laboratory, Elena Roshchina, expressed a different opinion: “Objects near the observatory have been seriously interfering with the observations of our telescopes for many years. Moreover, they interfere with all instruments without exception.”