XIXth Annual Conference of the Union of Astronomers in Bulgaria

On June 12-13, 2026, the XIXth annual conference of the Union of Astronomers in Bulgaria was held in Burgas, dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the official opening of the Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory. At the conference, Prof. B. Mihov (Institute of Astronomy with the NAO, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) delivered an invited report on the topic NAO Rozhen: 45 years are not enough. The report provided a brief overview of the development of astronomy in Bulgaria and the events that led to the decision to build the NAO. The various stages of the Observatory’s development were presented: construction, before and after 1989. The new observational equipment (1.5-m and 80-cm telescopes, 4k CCD camera Andor iKon-XL), acquired within the framework of the implementation of the work and financial plans of the RACIO consortium, an object of the National Roadmap for Scientific Infrastructure 2020-2027 of the Ministry of Education and Science, was also presented.