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There is an old Berlin song saying "it
happened in Schoeneberg in the
month of May..." Well, for me, the first part of the song is
correct, here I
had my first light (birth), but the second part is wrong because it was
March and it is just poor astronomical knowledge that it is call it the
month of Ram. Soon after my birth my family moved to the
river Rhein, you can tell
when you hear my dialect until today. At the time I did not take much
notice of the stars apart from falling down from the chicken-hut right
on my head or banging it against the garage wall when driving my
little bike.
< My first real one - SC 8" f6.3
Meade 2080/56 - 25.Feb.1992 |
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If I remember correct, the first time I went
outdoors to see some
astronomic event was the SoFi 1959,but actually I was more
interested
to see the chickens running home because it was getting dark.
Many years passed and I was living along the Atlantic ocean,
South
coast of Portugal when I again took interest in the night sky.
And
again it was an eclipse. But this time it was the eclipse of the
moon
in 1989. This time I also had my camera with me.
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Not only my camera had made "click" by then but
I started viewing the
night sky with every kind of optical device which I had gathered
through the years of my hunting activities.
< Zeiss/Spektiv vario
with Rekt./Dekl.
wedge
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After I discovered a milky spot just above the southern
horizon
with the above shown optic – I needed several weeks with my poor
documentations before I could identify this object as 'omega
centauri' – there grew the wish to share my nightly
discoveries with my wife by the help of photos. To accomplish
this task I constructed many strange looking guiding
constructions. |
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At the same time my wife and I passed our "patrao
de costa" (coastal
ship license). We were the first "estrangeros" to have done
this.To
learn also to navigate not only by the sun but also by the stars
I
sailed for two weeks with a Swiss, around the world sailor, who
taught
me how to handle the celestial tables. But, I had no clew about
identifying the stars. I could not correlate the the stars of
the night sky with their names.
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Back home, every night I lay on the beach and
studied the stars with the help of a kosmos star map. I became
more and more fascinated with the night sky. It was during this
time my hobby with astronomy really began. |
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The community "Gesellschaft
für Weltallkunde" at that time run by Mr. Behr in Erkrath,
offered their members the construction-plans of a so called "Fern-Seh-Spiege,
which was a Newton system with a 4" mirror.
This construction made me understand the "twisted"
light-path of a telescope and, what a surprise, one could also see some
stars with this 'broom" construction.
< Fern-Seh-Spiegel |
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On Feb 25th, 1992 everything came together, our friends fom
the States brought by plain, packed into two huge military sacs,
the present of my wife, a Meade 2080/56 SC telescope. The
sacs were labeled :
"AMATEUR ASTRONOMY
CONVENTION" Sevilla, Espana .
This 8" SC has been a f/6.3 typ, because taking images was my
main target. An Lumicon easy guider and a set of eye-pieces was
part of this 'Premium-Edition'. |
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Unfortunately my "discovery" 'omega
centauri' was much too low above horizone, but my
'barn-doore" mount was not too bad working.
<
here my data: 400 mm Novoflex , exposure: 6 min ,
hand-guided, film: Fuji HG 400
3 m above sea level / Algarve-Portugal
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| With my new telescope I traveled to all kind of places where
I could exspect some dark sky and/or could see into the lences
of some experts of hobby astronomers,
One said you could find them at the ITV.... >
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< For sure they have
some dark sky at Calar Alto..in Spain |
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"and on Emberger
Alm" Austria they have good foot too > |
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