================================================================= MAIDANAK OBSERVATORY Altitude=2600m Lat:38D 41'N, Long.: 66D 55' E Maunt Maidanak is located at a distance of 40 km south of the town of Kitab where the International Latitude Station is situated. It is an isolated summit belonging to the Pamir and Alai mountain system. Both in relief and vegetation the landscape of Maidanak is typical for high-mountain dry suptropics, bushes being prevailing. The relief is mainly smoothed and rock outcrops do not prevent from building. The road built together with the observatory just leads to Maidanak. The total distance between Kitab and Maidanak is 150 km long. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Mount Maidanak was selected as a result of ten-years site servings made by the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences and Sternberg Astronomical Institute. By the early 90-ies many astronomical institutions of the Former Soviet Union built their observatories there. About ten telescopes with appertures from 0.5 to 1 m were installed. According to the Bishkek Agreement between independent states of the FSU dated on 1992 Uzbekistan took under its jurisdiction all these observatories and then assigned them to the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute of the Uzbek Academy of Science. Today we are working at Maidanak under the agreement between Uzbekistan and Russian, Ukrainean and Lathuanian astronomical institutions. The inter-government agreement to create the International Maidanak observatory is now in progress. INFRASTRUCTURE. A hotel and additional living rooms at the telescopes, a mechanical workshop, telephone and e-mail service at Maidanak are available. The urban observatory's base is located in Kitab where we have a hotel, e-mail, FAX and telephone communications, as well as a transport service to convey both observers and heavy equipment to Maidanak. WEATHER. In summer the average nightly temperature is +12 C. In winter it falls to -15 C. The temperature night-time amplitude is about 5 C. Winds are faint, their velocity not exceeding 2-3 m/c. SEEING. Clear night time annual amount estimated by some authors varies from 1900 to 2000 hours. The month distribution shows the August - September period to be the most favourable, the clear night-time amount approaching 100 percent of the possible one. A local peak in Febriary is noted very often. It is important to note that there are no light pollution sources in Maidanak environs. Maidanak seeing conditions were persistently studied. However, the different author's estimates differ widely. According to Shcheglov's group the seeing is better than 0.8 arcsec in 50% cases. SOME RESULTS. The observational programmes carried out on Mt.Maidanak have been resulted in the following data: ROTOR programme. About 65000 UBVR observation were made of non-stationary stars on the early stage of the stellar evolution (Ae/Be Herbig and T Tau stars, fuors and relative stars). (Ulugh Beg Institute). 40000 UBVR observations of 150 Cepheids were made (Sternberg Institute). Light curves with dense sampling for 50 close binary systems were obtained. (Ulugh Beg Institute). Ground observations of X-ray sources simultaneous with space ones were made, as well. (Ulugh Beg Institute and IKI). Today the monitoring of unique astronomical objects is very actual. For this kind of problems the longitude of Maidanak is of great importance. The western and eastern sites with comparable clear night-time are located in five-six hours of the longitude. Solar physics specialists have already realized these advantages. IRIS and TON projects for Solar oscillation measurements are good examples of that. ======================================================================= Dr.Shuhrat EHGAMBERDIEV ! Astronomicheskaya 33 Director of the Astronomical ! 700052 Tashkent Institute of the Uzbek Academy ! Uzbekistan of Sciences ! Phone: (7-3712)350638 office ! 367789 home ! Fax: (7-3712)360037 e-mail: shuhrat@kumbel.silk.glas.apc.org =======================================================================