Astronomy Cast takes a fact based journey through the cosmos as it offers listeners weekly discussions on astronomical topics ranging from planets to cosmology.
Welcome!
Guidestar Observatory is a small private astronomical observatory in Southwest-Germany. After years observing and making astrophotography with portable equipment, a little roll-off-roof shed was built in 2002 by my dad and me. And soon after it was finished, I began my journey in observing minor planets. Together with my partner in crime, Sven Melchert, I enjoyed the new possibilites that a permanent installation of our setup was offering. Our former portable Vixen VC200 telescope on a GP-DX mount was then moved to the new observatory. First, our main focus was still astrophotography with occaisonal excursions to astrometry. But after a while, I was hooked by the search for minor planets - those little wanderers in our solar system, where some of them come pretty close to planet earth. So the focus shifted more and more to measuring positions of asteroids. It didn't take too long, before I realized, that our old telescope was to small to keep up with those faints targets, we where after. 'Aperture fever' was the diagnosis. So me and Sven spent those hours waiting for the long exposure times to end, with discussing what to do. In 2004 the decision was made and in September of the same year a Celestron C14 on a Astro-Physics AP1200-mount moved in.
Now, 16 years later, that instrument delivered almost 250.000 single exposures on over 700 nights and 1800 hours exposure time. When I recently examined my data and found these numbers I was a little surprised. Our location in Germany in the hills near the Rhine valley is not the Atacama desert. But especially in the last 3 years I was able to use 60-75 nights a year consistently. We have roughly a Bortle-5-sky here. With a CCD-camera it is possible to reach 20.0 mag in 20 minutes. It could be worse. Besides that our portable equipment was also not forgotten. Our passion for pure astrophotography never died. But to maximise the enjoyment, we wanted to shoot under better skies and without the hassle during a work week. So once a year we where packing up our gear and where going on vacation to the Plateau d'Albion in southern France. Usually a 10 hour trip. Besides improved weather conditions, the gastronomic part wasn't less important. During the years the telescopes and mounts where changing. Different refractors and mirrors come and go. Most of the pictures in our gallery where made in that location with those scopes. In the meantime, Sven moved to Stuttgart (pop. 630.000) and is practicing astronomy from his downtown-balcony. You can follow him on twitter https://twitter.com/sven__melchert.
I still try to make some useful follow-up observations on Near Earth Asteroids and keep sending more positions to the Minor Planet Center. During the years I was always looking to improve my results. Producing good, valuable data and increasing the efficiency of my telescope. Today the telescope is operating mostly in an autonomous mode or is controlled remotely for NEOCP observations, when newly discovered asteroids are in need of confirmation.
The results of Guidestar Observatory with the obscode A17 can be found at the following locations:
MPEC Statistics by Jost Jahn
MPC calculated residuals
NEODYS2
Observations Batchfile