The proposed research reconstructed the main milestones in the process of creation and establishment of the Kharkiv University as a scientific institution of the astronomical observatory in the 80s and 90s of the XIXth century. The topics and directions of scientific research of university astronomers, devoted to seismic observations with the aid of Rebeur-Pashwitz horizontal pendulums, research of the Sun activity, astrometric observations on the Repsold meridian circle to catalogue Zodiacal stars, study of the Lunar eclipses and meteor stream were considered. The participation of university astronomers in the creation of the plan of Kharkiv and its connection with the general network of precise geometric levelling of the Military Topographic Department of the General Staff have been investigated.

The dynamics of the replenishment of the instrumental base of the university observatory, the chronology of the creation of the observatory buildings complex at the current location of the Institute of Astronomy V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University have been discovered, the creative work and personal contributions to the establishment of the University observatory by professors Grigory Levitsky and Ludwig Struve, astronomers and observers Mykola Evdokimov and Josef Sykora have been highlighted.

The retro information resources, which were first involved into consideration, allowed to define and specify the sequence of stages of the development of astronomical science in Kharkiv during 1883-1899, to clarify the little-known facts of observatory life. The author applied special methods (historical-biographical, historical-chronological, retrospective and source analysis methods), the use of which made it possible to clarify the features of the functioning of the university observatory during a certain period. It is assumed the materials of the historical and scientific research on the creation and development of the Kharkiv University astronomical observatory in the 1880s-1890s will be used in scientific research on the history of astronomy in Kharkiv in the late XIX - the first half of XX century.

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