Dieter Lichtenknecker

Dieter Lichtenknecker (born March 12, 1933 , † August 26, 1990 ) was a German amateur astronomer, precision optician and entrepreneur.

Lichtenknecker developed and produced high quality astronomical telescopes and accessories (devices) for amateur astronomers and professional astronomers (observatories). There was no difference in quality. A smaller amateur telescope was made with the same precision as a larger instrument for an observatory. In Germany, Lichtenknecker telescopes were available from Kosmos-Verlag until the early 1980s. After that, Lichtenknecker products could only be ordered directly. He started the database of variable stars and worked on it until his death. This Lichtenknecker Database and some of its devices were named after him.

Life

Dieter Lichtenknecker was a passionate amateur astronomer even as a teenager. He was a trained precision optician, he received his training at Askania Werken Berlin, which at that time was still building large astronomical instruments for South America. From 1950, as a member of the newly founded Federal German Working Group for Variable Stars (BAV) at the Wilhelm Foerster Institute Berlin (later Wilhelm Foerster Observatory ) , he observed special short-period eclipsing and pulsation-variable stars. He should occupy himself with visual brightness estimation and instrumental measurement of brightness on variable stars for the rest of his life.

Hans Vehrenberg wanted a Schmidt camera 150/250 / 450mm from Lichtenknecker . That was the founding idea of Lichtenknecker Astro-Optik in 1959 in Weil der Stadt . Hans Vehrenberg helped him with the establishment by contributing an optical grinding machine to the initial equipment of the workshop. In 1963 the large Schmidt camera 300/450 / 1000mm followed, with which the photographs for Vehrenberg's " Mein Messier-Buch" were taken.

From 1970 to 1972 Lichtenknecker ran a new company for optical devices in Berlin . From 1973 he lived and worked in Hasselt (Belgium) . There he founded the Lichtenknecker Optics company with Jos Ruland (1933-2005) , which is now run by Ruland's son Hugo Ruland. As far as his time allowed, Lichtenknecker was actively involved in the BAV. Despite a serious and incurable illness, he devoted himself to building up the database named after him for short-period variable stars. Lichtenknecker was married. He died in 1990 and was buried in Holzgerlingen .

Devices from Lichtenknecker

Lichtenknecker FH 200 f / 15 (in the middle of the picture) and Lichtenknecker FH 90 f / 15 (right in the picture) on a Lichtenknecker mount M 145 in the Volkssternwarte Hannover .

Lichtenknecker lens AK 90/1300

Dieter Lichtenknecker's optical devices received great recognition. They are still used, discussed and distributed today. Particularly known are:

• Lichtenknecker refractor lenses and complete telescopes of the types AK, FH, HA, VA and VAS
• Lichtenknecker Schiefspiegler after Anton Kutter
• Lichtenknecker / Kosmos System 64. Modular system for the construction of telescopes, developed together with Kurt Knapp (Kosmos, Stuttgart).
• Lichtenknecker MPT-200 and MPT-300. A Schmidt-Cassegrain with interchangeable optics and aperture ratios from f / 2 to f / 13.3.
• Lichtenknecker FFC flatfield cameras with openings from 150 to 300mm. A Schmidt-Cassegrain astro camera , the high quality of which is achieved through an almost planar imaging surface.

Names after Lichtenknecker

The Lichtenknecker database of the Federal German Working Group for Variable Stars goes back to Lichtenknecker. It catalogs observations on variable stars according to physical and metrological principles. It also defines the measurement conditions and introduces the camera as an objective observer. It was accepted, modified and applied by the BAV in 1980. It is available online.

The asteroid (152320) 2005 UD ₈ was named after Dieter Lichtenknecker on March 31, 2018 at the suggestion of the discoverer Claudine Rinner and the initiator Andreas Philipp.

Web links

• Publications by D. Lichtenknecker in the Astrophysics Data System
• Dieter Lichtenknecker and Lichtenknecker Optics by Wolfgang Paech, biography with photos

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Frank Walter, Joachim Huebscher, Wolfgang Grimm: Collection of observation results on eclipsing stars
2. ^ Karl-Bernhard Menzel: Dieter Lichtenknecker - a correction - BAV. Retrieved March 13, 2016 . 
3. ^ Wolfgang Paech: Dieter Lichtenknecker and Lichtenknecker Optics
4. ↑ Astro-Foren.de
5. ↑ Wolfgang Paech: Dieter Lichtenknecker's flatfield camera ( Memento of the original from January 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2004. 
6. ^ Franz Agerer: The development of the database , p. 30.
7. ↑ Homepage of the Lichtenknecker Database of the Federal German Working Group for Variable Stars
8. ↑ Dieter Lichtenknecker in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).