Outstanding Pulkovo latitude observers Lidia Kostina and Natalia Persiyaninova

TL;DR

This paper highlights the significant contributions of Lidia Kostina and Natalia Persiyaninova to latitude observations at Pulkovo Observatory, emphasizing their leadership, extensive data collection, and advancements in observational methods and analysis.

Contribution

It documents the pioneering observational work and methodological developments by Kostina and Persiyaninova, which greatly advanced latitude measurement accuracy and understanding.

Findings

Collected over 66,000 high-precision latitude observations.

Made significant progress in understanding instrumental errors and data analysis methods.

Contributed to studies of latitude variations and polar motion.

Abstract

Lidia Dmitrievna Kostina and Natalia Romanovna Persiyaninova left a bright mark in the history of the Pulkovo Observatory, as well as in the history of the domestic and international latitude services. In the first place, they were absolute leaders in the latitude observations with the famous zenith telescope ZTF-135. In 1954-2001, they obtained together more than 66'000 highly accurate latitudes, which make about 2/3 of all the observations made by 23 observers with the ZTF-135 after the WW2. They also provided a large contribution to investigation of the instrumental errors, methods of the data analysis, developing of the observing programs. Their results in studies of the latitude variations and polar motion were also highly recognized by the community.