THE FOUNDATION OF ‘SAINT VÉRAN–PAUL FELENBOK’ ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY (1974)

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Paul Felenbok who was an astronomer at Paris-Meudon Observatory, and in 1974 founded a high-altitude observing station (2930 m), above Saint Véran village in the southern Alps (Queyras region of France). It was initially devoted to the study of the solar corona. After previous eclipses (1970, 1973) observed with the Lallemand electronic camera, the main goal was to investigate with this detector the structures of the far and hot corona in forbidden lines, using either narrow bandpass filters or spectroscopy. But everything had to be built prior to observations: a track to the observing station, a house to live in, a dome and a complex solar instrument. In this paper we summarize this adventure, which was partly successful in terms of scientific results but had to stop in 1982. However, activity at the station resumed after 1989 under the auspices of the ‘AstroQueyras’ association, which replaced the coronagraph with a 62-cm telescope on loan from Haute Provence observatory (OHP). The station was later extended with the installation of two 50-cm telescopes, and was rebuilt in 2015. It now receives visits from thousands of amateur astronomers every year.