What is VSA anyway?


Meteor Group (2003), around fish-eye
camera used for video observations

VSA, or Visnjan School of Astronomy, is a summer workshop of astronomy located in the Visnjan Observatory, situated in the western part of the Istrian highlands, near the city of Porec, Croatia. It represents a continuing experiment in an attempt to merge scientific projects and high school students education. Students are treated like research colleagues in the scientific process. Created in the Visnjan Observatory, VSA represents the result of many years' work of its organizers and founders. Twenty years till now VSA has been combining scientific work with learning, and throughout the years many scientific moments occurred, eg. discovery of 2003QA asteroid.

Main topics

Being main research topis at the Visnjan Observatory, the study of small bodies of the Solar System is a traditional VSA topic. This year's project involves newly discovered NEOs follow-up and also search for new asteroids and comets.


Asteroid Group (2005) discussing shape
of observed asteroid

There has always been a group for meteors' study. Different techniques will be used: visual and radio measurements, and observation on extremely low frequencies (ELF).

While the interaction of meteors with the high atmosphere is a continuation of a program that started 20 years ago, light pollution is contemporary problem, not only for astronomical observations, but for whole ecosystem. So, dealing with light pollution is becoming a surviving topic. Main goal is to experimentally obtain current light pollution conditions on Istrian peninsula and some theoretical modelling will also be done.

Technical research area this year includes telescope automatization technology. Work, mainly software, will be continued on Visnjan Observatory Robotic Telescope (VORT). Main goal is to have automatic telescope available to the client on the internet by the end of the school.