About

My name is Lucian Curelaru and I own and operate this facility. I’m software developer but I’m also a passionate amateur astronomer since my childhood. So I usualy use my free time in activities connected with astronomy. I’m mainly interested in scientific projects and I try to contribute in such projects as much I can. My observatory is quite old if you consider the strict definition which tells that an astronomical observatory is a place where from astronomical observation are made (It doesn’t matter if you have a big or a small scope / a nice cupola or just a building floor for you telescope). Anyway in my opinoion I  consider my observing place like an observatory only from the moment when it could provide useful scientific data, and this moment is sometime in 2010 when I started to make astrometric determination for double stars.

I would like here to put also some credits for my observatory and in general for my astronomical activity. I own a lot to my parents which noticed my intrest for astronomy since I was a child. They encouraged me constantly and helped me with all they can to follow my astronomical dreams. I remember they sacrificed a big part of their savings to buy me a telescope in a period we were pretty poor. They also encouraged me to read a lot and concentrate all my time on school and reading and this helped me a lot in acquiring a lot of knowledge and have a good logical thinking. Also my grandparents contributed a lot to all of this.

There is one more man I have to thank here. It is the one that dripped the passion to science in my mind. It is an uncle of mine , which have same first name and last name as me. He was a great lover of science, teacher of mathematics at Bucharest University he was also working at different research projects connected with mathematics and physics. He payed a visit at my family house when a was a small child he gave me a wonderful gift… an optical set for building a telescope and a microscope. I think that this was the spark that started all the fire after the years.

During the years I’ve joined diferent associations.

• In 1998 I’ve discovered and started to colaborate with Romanian Society of Meteors and Astronomy.
• In 2005 I’ve founded with some other amateur astronomers from my city a local club (Brasov Astronomy Club).
• In 2006 I’ve joined the S33 double stars observer group. Unfortunately the group has spreaded in a few years , but I’ve continued to observe,measure and report double stars during the years.
• From 2007 I started to colaborate with EURONEAR project.The colaboration was constant  and growed progresively during the years.
• In 2011 I’ve joined Mensa Romania. Even is not a astronomy society but a more generic one I mentioned it because I had some astronomy educational projects toghether with Mensa.
• In 2021 I’ve joined the IOTA-ES association and started to observe asteroid occultations.
• Finnaly in 2022 I’ve joined AUA ( Asociatia Ucenicul Astronom) , a regional astronomy club oriented on educational activities in astronomy field , but having the intention,based on my experience, to develop a new observational & research branch in this club in the near future.

Due to my activity and contributions in the EURONEAR projects which also generated some scientific papers in diffrent magazines, at a proposal made by the EURONEAR founder Ovidiu Vaduvescu, I was honored by the IAU  with a special award in february 2022. An asteroid from the Main Belt (574300) has received my family name. The official page can be seen here.

For more details about my work :