State Observatory Heidelberg-Königstuhl
| State Observatory Heidelberg-Königstuhl | |
|---|---|
 View over the main building with the open dome of the Bruce telescope towards the East Institute |
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| Category: | University institute |
| Carrier: | University of Heidelberg |
| Legal form of the carrier: | Public corporation |
| Facility location: | Heidelberg |
| Type of research: | applied basic research |
| Subjects: | natural Science |
| Areas of expertise: | Astronomy , astrophysics |
| Basic funding: | State of Baden-Württemberg |
| Management: | Andreas Quirrenbach |
| Homepage: | www.lsw.uni-heidelberg.de |
The State Observatory Heidelberg-Königstuhl is a historically important research observatory operated by the University of Heidelberg . It is located on the western summit of the Königstuhl near Heidelberg . Its geographical position is 8 ° 43 '15 "east longitude and 49 ° 23' 55" north latitude , 560 m above sea level. NN .
history
The original instrumentation of the observatory comes from the Mannheim observatory , founded in 1774 , which was temporarily relocated to Karlsruhe in 1880 due to the increasing deterioration in observation conditions . In the following period three locations for the construction of a new observatory were up for discussion, and it was finally agreed on the Königstuhl.
On June 20, 1898, the "Grand Ducal Mountain Observatory" was inaugurated by Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden . The astronomical institute initially consisted of two competing departments, the astrophysical under Max Wolf and the astrometric under Wilhelm Valentiner . Valentiner was director of the Mannheim observatory until 1880 and had initiated the relocation to Karlsruhe. In 1909, after Valentin retired , the departments were merged under the direction of Max Wolf.
As a schoolboy, Wolf had already set up a private observatory in the garden of his parents' house on Marchgasse in Heidelberg, which he continued to expand over the years. He optimized astrophotography and discovered a comet and the North American Nebula by photographic means .
After his appointment as a mountain observatory, Wolf succeeded in winning private donors for the acquisition of high-performance telescopes, including the American Catherine Wolfe Bruce , who donated US $ 10,000 at the end of the 19th century .
The main area of work of the observatory was initially the investigation of cosmic gas nebulae and the search for minor planets . Wolf, his colleagues and successors discovered over 800 minor planets by the 1950s, including the Achilles Trojan , which was first found in 1906 .
Together with Johann Palisa in Vienna , the first photographic star atlas for the search and identification of newly discovered celestial bodies, the Palisa-Wolf star atlas, was created .
In the course of time new telescopes were purchased and laboratories were built. In 1957 the Happel laboratory for radiation measurements was established.
Since 2005 the observatory is no longer a state institute, but has been integrated into the newly founded Center for Astronomy Heidelberg (ZAH) together with the Astronomical Computing Institute (ARI) and the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (ITA) of the University of Heidelberg and thus forms a part of Heidelberg University.
Today, the State Observatory works in the fields of extragalactic and theoretical astrophysics, the field of hot stars and instrumentation, and is involved in international projects for the European Space Agency , the German-French-Spanish organization IRAM , the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and NASA involved, currently in particular in the Lucifer project for the Large Binocular Telescope .
In addition, there are public sky observations and astronomy programs for children.
In 2006 Andreas Quirrenbach took over the management of the observatory from his predecessor Immo Appenzeller .
building
The telescopes of the state observatory are housed in six observation domes.
- The main building includes, among other things, the administration, a precision engineering workshop, an electronics workshop, a photo laboratory , a carpenter's shop, study, a computer room and an extensive library with around 23,500 volumes. The oldest holdings from the 18th century still come from the Mannheim observatory.
- The construction of the Happel laboratory goes back to a foundation of the painter Karl Happel . The lab contains, inter alia, a radiation source for Planck radiation (a black body ) for calibration of photometers for the spectroscopy , optical measuring devices for the development of optical systems and a central processing system.
- The former Meridian Hall now houses the “East Institute” and is used as a lecture hall, assembly room and archive for photographic plates .
- The north institute has work and guest rooms.
- Employees of the observatory and their families are housed in a residential building.
The buildings are under monument protection.
There is a planetary path on the premises to illustrate the planetary system.
Instruments
The Kann refractor (named after its founder, L. Kann) with an 8 inch (20 cm) aperture and three meter focal length with a wooden tube on an equatorial mount is the oldest telescope in the observatory. It was already mentioned in the annual report for 1894 by the Karlsruhe Observatory mentioned. Originally used for the visual observation of double stars , it is now used exclusively for public tours (e.g. for solar observation ).
The Bruce Telescope (named after the donor) is an astrograph . It is a double refractor , consisting of two 40 centimeter telescopes with a two meter focal length for photography, and mounted on the long guide scope with a 25 centimeter aperture and four meters focal length. With the device, which was put into operation in 1900, thousands of photographic plates were taken and numerous small planets were discovered, partly in cooperation with Johann Palisa in Vienna. A catalog of the plates is available on the Internet. Today the double telescope is used for guided tours.
A Ritchey-Chrétien-Cassegrain telescope from Carl Zeiss with a 75 centimeter primary mirror diameter and six meter focal length was put into operation in 1977. The telescope has an azimuthal mount and is tracked in both axes under computer control. It is mainly used for sky recordings of galaxies and star clusters using a CCD camera, mainly in the red spectral range of light . It was transported to Namibia in 2005 as part of the ATOM project (automatic telescope for optical observations) .
A Cassegrain telescope with a 70-centimeter primary mirror and a focal length of 5.6 meters, manufactured in-house, was put into operation in 1988. It is used to monitor variable objects, such as quasars , using a CCD camera.
The third telescope actively used for research is the Waltz telescope (also named after its donor), a Newtonian telescope with a 72 cm aperture that operates in the Nasmyth focus . It was put into operation in 1906 and was the first large telescope from Carl Zeiss. A spectrograph is generally connected there.
A Schmidt telescope with a diameter of 40 centimeters and a focal length of 90 centimeters was manufactured in 1963 in the institute's own workshop. The telescope has a large field of view of four degrees and is particularly suitable for recording star fields. In connection with an objective prism , numerous star spectra could be recorded simultaneously.
Another Cassegrain telescope with a 50-centimeter primary mirror and 6.95 meter focal length was also manufactured in 1978 in the company's own workshop. The main area of application was star photometry and polarimetry .
A historic six-inch refractor from 1859 was used to measure star clusters and for teaching and training purposes until 1924, and was then decommissioned. In 1957 the device was given away to the city of Karlsruhe, where it formed the basis for the establishment of the Karlsruhe public observatory .
literature
- Uwe Reichert: One hundred years of the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory . In: Stars and Space . Volume 37, No. December 11 , 1998, pp. 1036-1044 .
- State Office for Monument Preservation (Hrsg.): Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany, cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, city district of Heidelberg. Thorbecke-Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-7995-0426-3 .
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 23 ′ 53.5 " N , 8 ° 43 ′ 29.7" E