Official opening ceremony was held on 21.06.1965, by its first director Dr. Alexander Tomov (1930-2009), and was attended by much of Bulgarian leading astronomers - Acad.

Since then the observatory was used entirely for scientific research, in cooperation with astronomers from the Department of Astronomy at Faculty of Physics of Sofia University and members of foreign institutes.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Antov, a second long term director of the observatory, modernized both its residential and scientific facilities, including the addition of a smaller dome in 1994.

In July 2015 the observatory marked its 50 years of operation by hosting the X annual conference of the Bulgarian Astronomical Society (SAB).

The connections established with the manufacturer later helped purchase and equip instruments for the Bulgarian National Rozhen Observatory, which also has a twin 60 cm Cassegrain telescope.

In 1973 the first Bulgarian single channel electro-photometer was constructed and mounted on the main instrument, operating in photon counting regime, using the UBV photometric system of filters and five diaphragms (0.5–5 mm).

Since 2008 the main 60 cm telescope is equipped with a CCD camera FLI PL-9000, manufactured by Finger Lakes Instrumentation (USA).

During the 1990s, beside fast stellar electro-photometry of variable stars, it was also a base for meticulous observations of minor bodies of the Solar System, including the famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet encounter with Jupiter in July 1994.

In recent years Romanian astronomers have jointly used the observatory for an astrometry project, linked to the Gaia programme, prior to its launch in December 2013.

It was by that time an automatic seismograph was mounted in an adjacent isolated compartment, where it serves both Romanian and Bulgarian seismologists.

Current field of research involves CCD observations mainly of a long range of variable star types, as well as active galactic nuclei (AGN) - namely blazars.