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Contact
information
e-mail
J.schedler@panther-observatory.com
.
website
http://panther-observatory.com/
.
Biography
I was
born in 1953 in
Graz, Austria, but spent my youth in a small village in
western Tyrol doing a lot
of skiing and mountaineering. Since age 15 I was passionately doing chemistry experiments and
electronics in my free time.
After finishing secondary school I studied Chemistry at the Technical University in Graz.
In 1985 I co-founded the Austrian company named
CTP Air Pollution Control and since then am managing the company.
My
astronomical life started in 1997 with a simple Tasco reflector, a gift
for my second son. He soon lost
interest in his scope, so I tried it out and and began to
explore the Moon and the Planets. Because of the need for higher
quality and magnification I soon upgraded to the
Meade ETX90 which made for better planetary
viewing. In 1998 I joined
the local astronomy club and acquired a C11 on a G11 mount.
Astro-related photographic film
experiments failed, but in 1999 I successfully introduced a webcam for
planetary imaging and motivated other colleagues of my club to do the
same. My wife Roswitha supported my new
hobby fascinated from the endless variety of objects to observe and to
image.
To escape the painful setup
installation every night I built my own 3m observatory beside my house 25
km south of Graz during summer 2000 in a semi-rural environment (mag 5 sky
typical). Another big step into deep sky
astrophotography was the use of a digicam, starting with the Nikon CP995, later using the Canon D60, Canon 10D.
A simple CCD was used for autoguiding.
My
second high quality scope was a 4” f/6.5
TMB APO refractor. Ironically most times I was guiding with the C11 and imaging
with the 4” refractor. I accepted the lower cost
and big chip size of the Canon D-SLR with reduced efficiency, as no
reasonable priced CCD cameras were available up to 2003. To overcome the low quality of these raws I tried to compensate
it by long multiple exposures and tricky Photoshop processing. By doing
this I was pushing the limits of digicam imaging. At the beginning of the year 2004 SBIG released the STL-11000,
the first full frame CCD camera and I got one of the first
models. During the year
2004 I consequently explored mainly nebulas using the wide corrected field of my TMB. Also in 2004 my wife and I did our first trip to
Namibia, using most of the nights to image many fascinating southern
targets with the 4" TMB and the STL on my mobile setup.
Intense E-mail communication with colleagues all over the world
pushed my experience in image acquisition and processing.
Another dream came true in early 2005 when after a 2 years wait my
16" Cassegrain from P.
Keller was finished and installed in my observatory. This was a big step forward and
allowed for imaging
objects of various sizes in both medium to high resolution.
Using the very fast f/3 option of my cassegrain, I first tended to specialise in wider field images.
Later on I focused more on high resolution imaging using the STL-11000/STX-16803 with the cassegrain f/10 setup at 4
m focal lenght. From time to time I use a firewire b/w webcam typically at f/20 for
planets, Moon and Sun. In November 2005 I
was invited to speak at the Advanced Imaging Conference in San Jose, California where I spoke on imaging with the
STL-11000. It was a great experience because I met many famous
astro-imagers in person and enjoyed talking directly with them the first
time. Also in November 2005 I exchanged my 4” TMB against a TEC-140 f/7
APO refractor with field flattener to improve the resolution for my mobile
setup. This setup was used intensely for astro-imaging during my 2 week's
stays in Hakos/Namibia in Mai 2006 and in 2008.
Astrophotography
publications
Magazines
Astronomie
heute: Articles and images
Vatican Observatory Calendar 2006,
2008, 2010: Images
Interstellarum: Front page, articles and
images
Sky & Telescope: Front pages, articles and
images
Practical Astronomer: Front page and images
Ciel
& Espace: Front page, articles and images
VSD: Article and images
ULYSSE: Article and images
COELUM:
Front page and images
.
Books
Digital
Astrophotography (Ratledge David Ed.)
Chapter: Deep Sky
Imaging with a Digital SLR
UNIVERSE (2005 by DK): Images .
Double and Multiple
Stars: Images
Himmelskalenderen 2007: Images
Beautiful Universe 2008: Chapter/ images
Beautiful Universe 2009: images
Beautiful Universe 2010: images
Beautiful Universe 2012: Chapter/ images
.
Internet
NASA APODs:
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011
Universetoday.com
Observing site
Panther Observatory at
Wildon, Austria
Latitude: 46° 53‘ 02” North
Longitude: 15° 30‘ 27”
East
Elevation: 370 meters (1213 feet)
Astronomical Equipment
Telescopes
Astro-Optik 410
mm (16-inch) Cassegrain by Phillip
Keller
with corrected
prime focus at f/3 and corrected secondary focus at f/10
TEC 140mm
f/7 APO refractor with flattener
.
Used and recommended
lenses
Canon EF 200 mm f/2.8 L
Canon EF 100mm f/2 lens
Canon EF 50 mm 7/1.4 lens
Sigma 20mm f/1.8 lens
.
Mount
MK 100 ASA DDM85-XL direct drive mount with precision encoders
.
Telescope control
Autoslew control software astrometric syncronisation (Sequence), unguided operation possible up to 10 minutes
.
Cameras
SBIG STX-16803, ST8300 with 5/8 pos. filter wheels
Canon 40D modified
DMK21BF04
.
Filters and
holders
Baader 65
mm CLRGB filter set
Baader 7 nm H-alpha filter 65mm
Baader LRGB filter set 35mm
Baader 7 nm H-alpha filter 35mm
Baader 8 nm S-II filter 35mm
Baader 8 nm O-III filter 35mm
Baader Astrosolar
filter
Baader continuum filter (narrow green) for solar imaging.
Atik 5x filter wheel 1,25"
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Johannes and wife Roswitha at
their Panther Observatory
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