About the Museum
The Astronomy and Geodesy Museum (Museo de Astronomía y Geodesia) of the Complutense University holds an important collection of instruments of Astronomy, Geodesy and Topography dating to the 19th and 20th centuries, collected thanks to the interest of the professor Mr. José María Torroja Menéndez (1916-1994) and his team of collaborators (Miguel J. Sevilla and Ricardo Vieira).
The collection was configured with a didactic purpose: to show the evolution of the instruments and the methods used in these disciplines over the last 170 years. Some of the devices were used in the most important geodesic works carried out in Spain in the second half of the 19th century, of which General Ibáñez de Ibero was director, as was the establishment of the fundamental Spanish geodetic network and the first geodetic link between Europe and Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar. The oldest devices of the collection are the planetariums and a celestial sphere, destined to demonstrate the geocentric and heliocentric theories of the solar system, as well as the position of the stars in the celestial vault.
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