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Wendelstein ObservatoryUniversity observatory MünchenFaculty for physics of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität |
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The Wendelstein Observatory
Site descriptionThe Wendelstein Observatory is situated on the summit of Mount Wendelstein, a prominent, 1838 m high mountain in the bavarian Alpes. It is operated by the University Observatory of the University of Munich.
Only 75 km south-east of Munich, after one hour's drive this site can easily be reached via cable car (8 min) or by means of a cog rail road (25 min.). Final access to the very top is achieved by an elevator climbing up 109 m within the mountain. The observatory was first installed to survey the solar activity. In the mid-1980, it was redirected to night observations of stars and galaxies, but it still owns a 20 cm Zeiss solar coronograph. Nowadays, the coronograph is used only for eduction and public outreach. For the night time activity, a 80 cm DFM-telescope was installed which was operated until spring 2008 for scientific observing programs every clear night. It was equipped with high-tech focal instruments like high-speed multichannel photometers or a direct imaging CCD-Camera. This instrumentation has often been involved in international observing programs since. In 2007, a 40 cm telescope was installed to bridge the gap for the students lab until a 2 m telescope will take over on the old site of the 80 cm telescope. The pier and dome of the 80 cm telescope have been demolished and replaced by a new building with an 8.5m Baader dome (2010).
 Dome and control room of the 0.8 m telescope Meteorological Conditions:The weather conditions at Wendelstein are highly seasonal with sometimes more than 1m of snow in winter time and decent warmth in summer. But cold weather may occur at any time of the year.  Above the clouds at sunset Compared to other sites in Germany the meteorological conditions at Wendelstein have turned out to be fairly good. During typical years about 120 nights with less than 2/8 cloud cover can be used for astronomical observations. Extremely dark nights often occur in autumn when the upper cloud layers may reach altitudes of 1500 - 1800 m thus preventing light pollution by some nearby small villages. Seeing conditions have been studied in April through December 1998 using a copy of the ESO Paranal Seeing Monitor kindly made available by ESO. (e.g. ESO La Silla and Paranal in Chile, Calar Alto in Spain). Telescope and Instrumentation:80 cm telescope The 0.8 m Telescope at Wendelstein
The fork-mounted RC telescope was developed by the
DFM
company in
Colorado, USA and was installed at Wendelstein in 1989.
It was a Ritchie-Cretien system with a focal length of 9900 mm, a
primary diameter of 0.8 m (f-ratio f/12.4, image scale 20.8"/mm).
The telescope can carry equipment weighting up to 100 kp at the
Cassegrain focus.
Operation took place from a control room in the dome building during
the first decade of observations, but later was move into the main
observatory building.
80 cm focal instrumentsThe following instrumentation were availabe for the observers:
 The new control room of the 0.8 and 0.4 m telescope Several monitors are installed there to display the telescope status, to control the telescope motions, to check the meteorological conditions and to display the frames of an all-sky survey web camera. All commands for the telescope operation and for the slew of library objects are selected from the TCS terminal. For monitoring non-siderial objects like comets individual track rates of the RA- and Dec-drives can be set. 40 cm TeleskopA 40 cm Cassegrain telecope purchased from ASTELCO was installed in 2007 in the old 3m dome. The telescope is equipped with an ST-10 CCD camera. The filter wheel contains SDSS g', r' and i' as well as Johnson B and V filters. The f/8 systems yields a pixel scale of 0.44''/CCD pixel. The telescope will be used for the student lab and for Nova monitoring towards M31 during the construction time of the new 2 m telescope replacing the 80 cm telescope. Later-on, it will support the 2 m class telescope as extinction monitor. The 40-years-old aluminium dome crashed during the commissionig of the 40 cm telescope and was replaced by a new 3.2m Baader dome.
20 cm CoronographA special 20 cm refracor, built by Zeiss-Oberkochen, was used until 1988 to observe the activity of the sun in white light, Haplha, and spectra. The telescope allows to place special light stops (the so-called coronographic design which produces artificial solar eclipses) allowing to observe the solar atmosphere under excellent atmospheric conditions. The telescope is used for public outreach and student eduction. Solar activity data taken at Wendelstein have been digitzed for the years 1947 und 1982 and are availabel from the Solar Data Services of the National Geophysical Data Center (Boulder).
Future developement - 2 m class telescope at WendelsteinA 2m telescope with an alt-az mounting and two Nasmyth ports is under construction by Kayser-Threde, Munich, and Astelco Systems, Martinsried to replace the former main Wendelstein telescope, the 80 cm DFM facility. The dome and support building was finished (in 2010). The new telescope should offer a wide field imaging mode (about half a degree, e.g. the size of the moon) as well as multi-color imaging in optical and infra-red, medium resolution field and high resolution single object spectrographs to support the future science projects at the University Observatory Munich, especially those in the context of the cluster of excellence "Origin and Structure of the Universe", and in close collaboration with our chair of the 9 m Hobby-Eberly telescope in Texas. A detailed overview can be found in Sterne und Weltraum April 2008 on page 18 (in german).  Design drawing of the 2 m Wendelstein telescope by the manufacturer. Meteorite cameraTill 2008 a meteorite camera was used on Wendelstein (see DLR, Das Europäische Feuerkugelnetz). 
Example of a fire ball image taken with the meteorite camere on 13/1/2008 (courtesy of Dieter Heinlein) Observing ProgramsThe 0.8 m telescope at the Wendelstein observatory was used in different modes:
The 40 cm telescope continues the student lab program and the nova survey towards M31. It is further used to monitor variable AGB stars in selected globular clusters and to study the transmission of the atmosphere above Mt. Wendelstein. In all modes of observations, students had the chance to participate and get trained in modern observing and instrument development. Up to now, a total of 35 diploma thesis and PhD works has been done at the observatory since 1989. Furthermore, a large number of publications has been based on data collected partly or totally at the observatory. The participation in international campaigns has been requested quite often supporting parallel observing with sattelite telescopes or world wide nets of ground based facilities. Guest observers from USA, Sweden, Argentina, and China have made use of the telescope. Staff:
Wendelstein live! (The observatory webcam)Astronomical image galleryLandscape image galleryHistoryVenus transit 2004Publications, dissertations and diploma thesis'sBack to the main page of the University Observatory MunichLast revision: April 2011email: A. Riffeser (arri@usm.lmu.de) |
