The surface of a new mirror for the 40-year-old, 1.88-m telescope at the Kottamia Observatory in Egypt is currently being machined at Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH. Under an agreement signed with Egypt's National Research Institute for Astronomy and Geophysics . Zeiss will fit the telescope with a new Cassegrain optical system. Observations using the modernized telescope will begin in May 1997. The desert observatory is 70 km southeast of Cairo in an area that boasts 250 clear nights a year.
I would like just to recall your attention on a site I recently visited, and still very little known. It is Kottamia Observatory, in Egypt, not far from Cairo. I was astonished when I read the papers and internal reports on the site characteristics. They have a dark sky, with an enormous amount of measurements mapping all the sky and spanning many years. Typical numbers are V = 21.5 mag/sqrarcsec, B=22.4. Extinction values are published, a bit higher than La Silla. They have an average of 260 photometric, full clear nights per year and 60-70 more just spectroscopic. about 30-40 are not usable. The site is located at 500 m of altitude and the latitude is +30 degrees. The seeing currently measured at the 180 cm telescope is between 1.5 and 2.0". They are checking for higher altitude sites in the area, in particular in Sinai and in South Egypt regions.