Hi Folks,
my name is Klaus, MY 1958. I am living in the greater vicinity of Duesseldorf, lower rhine area Germany, and performing my first steps into spectroscopy.
I am in astronomy since the age of 12 but interrupted the adventure for the last two decades due to labour. Now with the retirement upfront I will step back into the old hobby again. Whilst in the beginning 80s I was mostly engaged in writing computer programs for orbital calculations of comets and small planets in a local astronomy club (it was the time when IBM PCs entered the markets) my interest has diverged more towards physical aspects of stellar evolution. The progress in CCD/CMOS technology and the great work -amongst others- done by our french pro amateur collegues in developing equipment both usable for serious work and being affordable offers opportunities which we even didn't dare to dream about a few decades ago. What a wonderful time to live this hobby!
I hope that some day I will be able to contribute a little bit; for the beginning I am afraid I will be more focused on questions than answers
As a start I will be participating in a training course on using spectrographic equipment offered by a highschool in Wuppertal, Germany upcoming autumn, led by the trio Ernst Pollmann, Michael Winkhaus and Bernd Koch. Expectation is to intensify my knowledge and learning handling the equipment.
Equipmentwise I am waiting for the delivery of my stuff which will -in the beginning- consist of an AP Mach 1 mount and AP 130GTX Refractor for the "just look and enjoy" part of my hobby
. This will then soon be complemented by a SCT system (C11/14 or similar - not decided yet) for the spectroscopic work. For the time beeing I am looking forward to climb up the learning curve and raising my questions one at a time...
Thanks for reading and
with best regards to you all - Klaus