Kurt Birkle

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Discovered asteroid : 9
(5879) Almeria 1 February 8, 1992
(14856) 1989 SY 13 2 September 26, 1989
(26825) 1989 SB 14 2 September 26, 1989
(29163) 1989 SF 14 2 September 26, 1989
(30803) 1989 SG 14 2 September 26, 1989
(46550) 1989 SZ 13 2 September 26, 1989
(175661) 1989 SC 14 2 September 26, 1989
1 together with Ulrich Hopp
2 together with Johann M. Baur

Kurt Birkle (born January 8, 1939 in Freiburg ; † January 1, 2010 ) was a German astronomer and asteroid discoverer. Between 1989 and 1993 he identified a total of nine asteroids , six of them together with Johann M. Baur .

Life

Birkle finished his studies of physics in 1966 with a diploma thesis at the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg on the behavior of photospheric granulation in the cycle of solar activity . After another year at the Fraunhofer Institute, in which he researched the structure of the solar chromosphere , he went to the State Observatory in Heidelberg-Königstuhl as a doctoral student in early 1968 . With his doctoral supervisor Hans Elsässer , he moved to the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg in 1969 . For several years he took part in the search for a suitable location for a planned MPIA observatory with powerful large telescopes. His doctoral thesis, presented in 1973 with the title Comparative Measurements of Astronomical Seeing in Greece, Spain, South West Africa and Chile, shows his contributions to the search for a location. Birkle's measurements of the seeing, the extinction and the meteorological data, which were carried out under conditions of deprivation far away from any infrastructure, ultimately tipped the scales in favor of the Calar Alto mountain in the Spanish province of Almería . Together with his Spanish colleagues, he led the construction of the Calar Alto observatory , of which he was director from 1974 to 1998.

Birkle's research interests were particularly comets and active galaxies . The instrumentation that was introduced during his leadership on Calar Alto ranged from photo plate cameras for direct recordings to image converter cameras for the near infrared range, multi-stage image intensifiers , various spectrographs and CCD cameras to modern infrared cameras and adaptive optics . In 1998 he returned to the MPIA in Heidelberg and devoted himself entirely to his research. After his retirement in 2003, he took part in the digitization of the extensive photo plate archive of the state observatory.

Birkle died on New Year's Day in 2010 when he had an accident shortly after midnight on the motorway near Freiburg.

The asteroid (4803) Birkle was named after him.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Minor Planet Discoverers

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Birkle, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German amateur astronomer and asteroid discoverer
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1939
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 2010