The past, present, and future of the observatory at Skalnaté Pleso, High Tatras, Slovakia

The observatory at Skalnaté Pleso, Slovakia, serves as a facility for both astronomical and meteorological research in the High Tatra Mountains. It is located at an altitude of 1778 meters a.s.l. on the south-eastern slopes of the Lomnický Peak near the Tatranská Lomnica municipality. The observatory was established in 1943 by Dr. Antonín Bečvář, a Czech astronomer and meteorologist. His well-known works, the famous sky charts (i.e. Atlas Coeli) and photographs of mountain clouds were based on observations made at the Skalnaté Pleso Observatory. Nowadays, astronomical measurements are made under the supervision of the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, which also operates another observatory located at the Lomnický Peak (2634 m a.s.l.) and two telescopes at the Stará Lesná Observatory (810 m a.s.l.). These observatories are used to study interplanetary matter, solar, and stellar physics. Apart from astronomical research, the Skalnaté Pleso Observatory provides standard climatological measurements including measurements of air temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, snow cover, precipitation, sunshine duration, wind speed, and wind direction since as early as 1943. With only minor modifications, the methodology of meteorological observations remained the same up until today. In 1962, the meteorological observatory was incorporated into the Slovak Academy of Sciences, currently the Earth Science Institute, and the mission of the station was extended to cover research mostly in the field of energy and radiation balance. Later, measurements of ozone concentrations were initiated, and an automatic weather station was installed. This enabled the extension of ozone research to its phytotoxicity on vegetation and beyond. The advance in automatic weather stations has introduced important questions regarding the comparability of automatic measurements with standard (conventional) measurements conducted by observers.