ORIGINS AND TRANSFORMATION OF SCIENTIFIC ASTROMETRIC RESEARCH: MAIN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY OF THE NAS OF UKRAINE

The paper aims to highlight the formation and progress of the astrometric schools of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine — the scientific school of fundamental astronomy, positional astrometry, and global geodynamics of Academician Oleksandr Yakovych Orlov, the Scientific School of fundamental astronomy and selenodesy of the Corresponding member of the Academy of Science professor Avenir Oleksandrovych Yakovkin and the scientific direction of I. G. Kolchinsky, A. B. Onegina, and A. S. Kharin on photographic and positional astrometry. The main directions of research of the scientific school in fundamental astronomy, positional astrometry, and global geodynamics are the next: the creation of catalogs of faint stars, stars of the latitudinal program, radio sources, mathematical methods of researching the change of latitudes, and the movement of the Earth’s poles, fundamental astronomy (study of astronomical constants), application of the movement of the poles and irregularities of the Earth’s rotation (laser ranging of the artificial satellites of the Earth, VLBI-observations, GNSS-observations). Introducing new observational methods and tools contributes to the further development of the school and the preservation of its scientific traditions. The purview of the scientific school of fundamental astronomy and selenodesy concerns the first astrometric mapping of the Moon’s surfacedetails using data from orbital satellites, as well asthe study of stellar dynamics, kinematics and structure of the Galaxy. The researchfindings in photographic and positional astrometry are analyzed. The role of the Ukrainian Virtual Observatory (UkrVO) in the current development of the scientific directionis indicatedbasedon the possibility of digitizing astronomical photographic negativesobtained in the frameworks of vast photographic surveys of the sky, in particular,the FON/FONAK project. Re-reduction of past observational data in up-to-date reference frames allowed the initiatingof the search for asteroids, their earlier positions and precoveries, as well as thereworking of earlier observations of large planets and small bodies of the Solar System.