Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada

Astronomical observatory of the Spanish Navy

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (January 2013) Click for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.

Observatory

Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada

Alternative names	Instituto y Observatorio de Marina de San Fernando
Observatory code	983
Location	Province of Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain
Coordinates	36°27′54″N 6°12′21″W / 36.46500°N 6.20583°W / 36.46500; -6.20583
Website	www.armada.mde.es/roa
Location of Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada
Related media on Commons
[edit on Wikidata]

The Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada (Royal Institute and Observatory of the Spanish Navy) is the scientific institute and astronomical observatory of the Spanish Navy (Armada), located in San Fernando in the Province of Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain.

History

It was founded in 1753 and is the oldest in Spain. Astronomy was of particular importance to the navy in the context of navigation. In 1790 the Royal Observatory in Madrid was built to take over the purely astronomical work of the facility at San Fernando.

Current activities

In recent years the observatory has been adversely affected by light pollution. However, it uses laser technology to monitor pieces of space junk.

The observatory operated a time ball so that ships at sea could synchronize their clocks. After better timekeeping at sea made it obsolete, it was disabled, but it was reactivated in the late 20th century every day at 13:00.