Königsberg Observatory was built on the hill Butterberg in 1811 in the highest northwest part of the city rampart. The observatory was established by Frederick William Bessel and served for the needs of the Albertina University, where Bessel taught astronomy. Using the observatory, in 1834 Bessel proved, that the Moon had no atmosphere. Then he managed to do the first successful measurement of stellar parallax[1] in 1838 for the star 61 Cygni using a Fraunhofer heliometer[2].
Bessel during his time at the Observatory pinpointed the positions of over 50,000 stars. In 1851 the first complete snapshot of the solar eclipse in human history was done by a Königsberg daguerreotyper Berkowski.
The Observatory was destroyed by Royal Air Force bombs in 1944 during Second World War. The Bessel memorial was built on the hilltop Butterberg in General Galitsky St., on the spot where the observatory had been.
Also Bessel’s name can be heard when mentioning a school in Königsberg (now music school) and a street in Kaliningrad.
[1] The angular difference in direction of a celestial body as measured from two points on the earth's orbit, and it can be used to determine the distance of Earth to another star directly with accurate astrometry.
[2] An instrument devised originally for measuring the diameter of the sun but also employed for measurements of the distance of two stars too far apart to be easily measured with an ordinary telescope.
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