Konkoly Observatory

Holy aurora, Batman!! :O

Featuring the first proper publication of this image, showing the near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon in front of M31, captured by Miklós Lovas on 15 December 1974, nine years
before the official discovery by the IRAS satellite.

NEO and imminent impactor discoveries from Hungary: recent results and lessons learnt 2022 EB5, 2023 CX1 and 2024 BX1: these are the three recent imminent impactor discoveries from the Piszkéstető Mountain Station of the Konkoly Observatory. They make up about one percent of all NEO di...

Szabó N. O. et al: "NEO and imminent impactor discoveries from Hungary: recent results and lessons learnt"
A summary of our asteroid search program by undergrad student Norton Szabó. arxiv.org/abs/2512.06594

Shortly after becoming a citizen, Maria Lugaro became the first woman astronomer to be elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Congratulations! ❤️ 💪👏

Although we aren't a teaching institution, fostering the next generation of astronomers is extremely important to us. We took 12 of our sponsored/supervised undergraduates to Piszkéstető Station to introduce them to our telescopes. Huge thanks to the grad student team who organized the whole event!

Csilla Kalup among the Forbes 30/30 Our graduate student researcher, Csilla Kalup, has been included in the 2025 edition of Forbes magazine's 30 successful Hungarians under 30 list.

Our grad student made it to this year's Hungarian Forbes 30/30 list thanks to her work on modeling the composition of Haumea's work and overall excellence: konkoly.hu/en/news/orga...

Our own supernova expert, Réka Könyves-Tóth and Lili Szabó form the Geographical Institute of the CSFK have been awarded with the Youth Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Congrats!

Nyugdíjba vonult a Gaia űrtávcső, ami a magyar csillagászok munkáját is örökre megváltoztatta Kétmilliárd csillag megfigyelésével elkészítette galaxisunk legpontosabb 3D-térképét, és bár csak tíz éven át működött, még évtizedekig ellátja munkával a csillagászokat. Magyar kutatók meséltek az eu...

Egy fázis lezárult a Gaia életében, de még messze a misszió vége:
qubit.hu/2025/02/20/n...

Young Scientist Kickoff Workshop, to kick off 2025 and the Spring semester! Three days of co-working for our sponsored and supervised undergraduates and PhD students, where they could show their projects to each other and get to know each other better.

Episode 119: Professor Ivan Almar and Astronomy in Hungary during the Soviet Era  - AstrotalkUK A brief but fascinating life and work of Professor Ivan Almar. he and his wife's contributions to asttronautics in Hungary during and after the Soviet era.

Hermann #Oberth and Theodor von #Karman, Hungary, are two individuals associated with Hungary. Ivan Almar (from @konkolyobs.bsky.social) is another. Inducted into the Hall of Fame during #iac2024 in #Milan. Here is an interview I recorded with him there.
astrotalkuk.org/episode-119-...

YouTube video by László Molnár 2025 New Year's Aurora from Piszkéstető

Glorious aurora and SAR arc on the first night of 2025, as captured by our all-sky camera at Piszkéstető station: www.youtube.com/shorts/X3aOj...

YouTube video by László Molnár 16 years of XX Trianguli

And check out this cool video of 16 years of spot evolution on XX Tri, created in collaboration with data scientists at MOME Budapest: www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0VG...

Most spotted star in the sky: In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the AIP and the HUN-REN CSFK have reconstructed the temporal changes in the distribution of surface spots on the red giant star XX Trianguli. phys.org/news/2024-12...

Magyar kutatók szerint óceán rejtőzhet egy távoli törpebolygó, a Makemake belsejében A James Webb űrtávcső mérései Kiss Csaba és kollégái szerint arra utalhatnak, hogy a Plútónál is messzebb keringő égitest felszínén jégvulkánok működnek.

Kiss Csaba és munkatársai a James Webb űrtávcsővel vizsgálták meg a rejtélyes törpebolygót:
qubit.hu/2024/11/28/m...

Two hydrogen-rich core-collapse supernovae in the same galaxy in 6 years. SN 2024abfl is 4 magnitude fainter than SN 2018zd was: it's a rare, low-luminosity Type II SN. CCD frames taken with telescopes at @konkolyobs.bsky.social

GEOASTRONOMY: Bridging Earth and the Cosmos to Understand Rocky Exoplanets A total of €571 million in funding has been awarded to fifty-seven research groups to tackle some of the most complex scientific problems, spanning a wide range...

The European Research Council has awarded an ERC Synergy Grant for the „GEOASTRONOMY” project, an ambitious scientific endeavor that seeks to reveal the chemical foundations of rocky exoplanets around Sun-like stars.
konkoly.hu/en/news/publ...

Betelgeuse and Betelbuddy? Red supergiant in Orion likely has a stellar companion New results from HUN-REN CSFK researchers and their US colleagues suggest that the six-year light variations of Betelgeuse may be caused by a previously unknown...

New results from HUN-REN CSFK researchers and their US colleagues suggest that the six-year light variations of Betelgeuse may be caused by a previously unknown companion star.
konkoly.hu/en/news/rese...

Iván Almár, who celebrates his 92nd birthday this weekend, is one of the founders of Hungarian space exploration.
konkoly.hu/en/news/pres...

Hungarian astronomers are the most successful in Europe, ESA analysis reveals The European Space Agency has presented an analysis of more than 68,000 articles on astronomy, planetary science and heliophysics, which shows that Hungarian as...

ESA has presented an analysis of more than 68,000 articles on astronomy, planetary science and heliophysics, which shows that Hungarian astronomers have the best conversion rate of all ESA members relative to financial contributions.
konkoly.hu/en/news/pres...

Well, hello there! Nice to see you all in the new place. Let's start with a few stories from our recent past.