The foundation of "Saint Véran-Paul Felenbok" astronomical observatory
Résumé
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Paul Felenbok (1936-2020) who was astronomer at Paris-Meudon observatory, and founded in 1974, fifty years ago, a high altitude station (2930 m), above Saint Véran village in the southern Alps (Queyras). It was initially devoted to the study of the solar corona. Following solar eclipses (1970, 1973) observed with the Lallemand electronic camera, the main goal was to detect with this sensitive detector the structures of the far and hot corona in forbidden lines, using either narrow bandpass filters or spectroscopy. But everything had to be done prior to observations: a track, a house for astronomers, a dome and a complex instrument. We summarize here this fantastic adventure, which was partly successful in terms of scientific results and had to stop in 1982; however, the activity of the station resumed after 1989 under the auspices of the “AstroQueyras” association, which replaced the coronagraph by a 62 cm night telescope from Haute Provence observatory; the station extended later with two 50 cm telescopes, was rebuilt in 2015 and received the visit of thousands of amateurs.
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