Urania digitale: il patrimonio storico scientifico degli osservatori astronomici italiani in Polvere di stelle e Internet Culturale

The National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), the main Italian research center for the study of Universe, promotes, carries out and coordinates research activities in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. It also projects and develops innovative technologies and state-of-the-art tool for the study and exploration of the cosmos. INAF is made up of seventeen facilities spread all over the national country, some of which were founded in ancient times. The astronomical observatories, in fact, hold a remarkable bibliographic, archival and historical instrumental heritage that represents a unique entity of great cultural interest in thecontext of the Italian and European research institutes. To promote its historical collection, INAF has been making an overall project of safeguarding and conserving for a few years, aimed at digitizing the most important books and archival documents both culturally and iconographically. The digitizations are available on the web portal of the INAF cultural heritage “Polvere di stelle” which allows the users to fully browse the volumes and consult a selection of documents from historical archives, in particular solar, stellar and meteorological observations made during the nineteenth century. INAF has also made high resolution digital images of the same material stored into INAF national repository (Italian data-center for astronomical archives) using the same storage and sharing methods reserved for astronomical data. Thanks to collaboration of ICCU, from 2019 it is possible to consult these digital collections on the web portals of Internet Culturale and Europeana.