AstroHD - Welcome!

After several years without personal presence on the web, this is my new online home. This site will serve mainly as a documentation platform for my astronomical experiences and adventures - may it be new observations or construction projects.

A real big project I planned and finished in 2014 was the construction of a astronomical observation deck on the roof-top of my house! After research and planning for more than one and a half years, a dream came true within a few days. Now my own observatory is a reality.
Since that time, I am always busy to improve the functions and versality of the observatory and tune and optimize its usage. Interesting improvements and experiences will be documented in my blog.

Equally important to me is  to share the fascination "Space" with others. Since I built my observatory, I was able to build up my own "outreach" programme giving visitors as well as kids in elementary school interesting insights and hopefully creating interest in physics and science.

CCD Workshop 2019 presentations

SatNOGS update

As a kid, when we visited the planetarium in Stuttgart, I always was amazed about the monitor in the waiting area where they displayed the current weather satellite images they were able to receive. The setup really was impressive, with a special antenna outside of the planetarium and lots of hardware receivers and amplifiers that decoded the MeteoSAT signals. While it was impressive, it always was clear that all the hardware required was simply too expensive for a student to buy and install. Since then, I almost forgot about the fascination of receiving satellite signals with my own groundstation.

Read more: SatNOGS update