Biały Słoń (English: White Elephant; Ukrainian: Білий слон, Bily slon) is a Polish name for an abandoned campus of the former Polish Astronomical and Meteorological Observatory of University of Warsaw, located at remote area on the peak of Pip Ivan in the Chornohora range of the Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine.

Currently the structure is used as a mountain shelter with a small search and rescue team with some rooms adapted for lodging and recovery.

Biały Słoń was a very expensive structure with total costs exceeding one million Polish złoty, a huge burden on the state budget at the time.

The whole complex consists of three major features that could be considered as separate structure connected together: a tower, a main building, and smaller service attachment.

In the lower levels, there were lodgings for soldiers of the "Karpaty" Regiment of the Border Defence Corps, with headquarters in Stryj.

[7] Its official name was the "Observatory of the State Meteorological Institute", but soon it took on the nickname "Biały Słoń", due to the color of its walls.

The observatory was lavishly equipped, with a custom-made astrograph and refracting telescope made by the British company Grubb Parsons of Newcastle upon Tyne.

It had its own power plant with two diesel motor-generators and central heating fueled by oil, which was transported in iron barrels from the Polmin company in Borysław (today Boryslav).

The director of the observatory, Mykulychyn native Władysław Midowicz, wrote that the staff's main problem, however, was water, as no waterworks had been constructed and it had to be carried from a stream 4 miles (6.4 km) away.

Wladyslaw Midowicz wrote that the Hutsuls thought that the observatory was in fact a mighty cannon, capable of attacking neighboring countries.

[5] On 18 September 1939, following the Soviet aggression on the eastern part of Poland (see: Kresy), the personnel of the observatory packed the most important equipment (including the refractor[citation needed]) and left for the Hungarian border.

In the beginning of October 2002 the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast administration, Mykhailo Vyshyvaniuk, sent an official letter to the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, about the project.

By the end of November that year, Vyshyvaniuk received an answer from the First Deputy of the presidential administration, Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, stating that the proposition was reviewed and recognized as one for international discussion for the restoration.

[6] From July 2012[6] some preparation work started and continued in the fall of 2012, where all window openings were sealed with bricks and the roof was covered.

[11] In December 2017 it was reported that the White Elephant will be equipped with a lightning protection system, and the Ciscarpathian University had already ordered documentation for a projected budget.

The tourist traffic over Chornohora Ridge is constant and exceeds 6,000 people per month in summer, according to statistics of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in 2017.