Rudolf Kühn (astronomer)

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Rudolf Kühn (born January 27, 1926 in Stuttgart , † December 4, 1963 in Munich ) was a German astronomer .

Life

Rudolf Kühn was the son of a test pilot who had a fatal accident on the day his son was born. Kühn studied physics and astronomy in Göttingen and Munich; There he received his doctorate in 1950 with the work The light and color change of some RR Lyrae stars , which was based on visual observations on a telescope at the Munich University Observatory . From 1950 to 1954 he was an observer in the observatory on the Wendelstein east summit, which was demolished in 1965 (not to be confused with the solar observatory on the Wendelstein main summit, today's observatory) and dealt with photometric studies of dark clouds in the Milky Way . His talent for conveying astronomical knowledge in an understandable way brought him into contact with the Bavarian radio . In 1953, he began the series Kleine Sternkunde in his radio program . In 1954, the Bayerischer Rundfunk television program launched, he received the Sternbild des Jahres broadcast on the Munich evening show . This began his career as a full-time television astronomer (from 1956). His shows made him a favorite of the female TV audience in particular. In 1956, Kühn developed a television telescope together with Munich opticians and precision mechanics with funds from Bayerischer Rundfunk: The focal point image could be displayed on the light-sensitive layer of a television camera either directly or enlarged using intermediate optics. For the first time in Germany, television images of the sun, the moon, the bright planets Jupiter and Saturn as well as double stars were made available to an audience of millions in a regular television program. Kühn also wrote some popular science books. With Hans Elsässer and Karl Schaifers , he founded the magazine Sterne und Weltraum in 1962 .

Kühn played the role of Professor Franz Karl Achard in the television comedy Annoncentheater - An evening program on German television in 1776 from 1962 (director: Helmut Käutner ) .

Kühn died in a traffic accident when he had an accident with his Porsche on black ice on the autobahn near Augsburg.

Works

  • The Heavens Tell , 1962
  • Astronomy Popular , 1958
  • Heaven full of wonder , 1957

literature

  • R. Kühn and F. Pilz: The television technology in astronomy. In: Stars and Space. Volume 2, No. 7/8, 1963 ISSN  0039-1263 , p. 175
  • Günter D. Roth: Astronomy in (then) new media - On the 50th anniversary of Rudolf Kühn's death. In: Stars and Space. Volume 53, No. 1, 2014 ISSN  0039-1263 , p. 96

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wendelstein Observatory: Official homepage of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich
  2. ↑ Communications of the Astronomical Society 1958, p. 79
  3. ^ Annoncentheater in the film database IMDb
  4. ↑ See Spiegel 44/1962: Fernsehen / Telemann: Verpuffet
  5. ↑ See Spiegel 50/1963: Died: Rudolf Kühn
personal data
SURNAME Kühn, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1963
Place of death Munich