long night of museums [6.10.2007]

This time we visited:

The original Vienna snowglobe factory

Kuffner Observatory

Kuffner-Sternwarte is a historical Observatory dating from the end of the 19th century. Moriz von Kuffner, former owner of the brewery in Ottakring, founded the Observatory as a private scientific institute in the year 1886.

The Great Refractor (270/3500) is the third largest refractor in Austria today. It was installed at the Observatory in 1886 and was used together with the Schwarzschild Refractor (156/2940 mounted in 1890) for early astrophysical work including photography.

The Heliometer (217/3000mm) was originally designed to measure very small angles on the celestial sphere. The Vienna Heliometer was the world´s largest instrument of its type. It was installed in 1896 and mainly used to measure the distances to stars. From 108 known distances in 1910, 16 stars were measured at the Kuffner-Observatory.

The Meridian Circle (132/1500mm) was the largest meridian passage instrument of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was installed in 1886. The telescope is equipped with one of the first impersonal micrometers for measuring star passages.
It is now the largest meridian circle in Austria and still one of the largest in Europe.

Ernst Fuchs Museum/ Wagner Villa

Built in 1889 by world-famous architect Otto Wagner, the villa was saved from ruin in 1972 by Ernst Fuchs and has been a private museum since 1988. The six magnificently decorated rooms open to the public contain the world's largest collection of oil paintings, drawings, copper etchings, sculptures and applied art by the master of Fantastic Realism. Stroll through the artist's former private chambers and admire the specially designed, hand-made furniture, intarsias and fin-de-sieclè stained glass windows

Josephinum