Hi, I am Walter Koprolin. I may not be the typical
amateur astronomer, as I have actually studied astronomy at the University of
Vienna and finished with a doctorate. But let's start at the beginning:
I got interested in astronomy when I was about 17, my interest was probably
kindled by a small department-store refractor which my family had stored in our
garden-house. This had been purchased by my grandmother, back at the beginning of the '80s. Well,
the views it offered were not really satisfying, as the optics were exceedingly
bad; stars looked like planets as the scope was not able to show anything else
but disks of light. Additionally, the mount was very shaky. However, I got
curious enough to attend a basic astronomy course held by Hermann Mucke at
Vienna's planetarium. During that course, another small refractor was introduced
as ideal entry-level telescope, a 63mm Zeiss Telementor achromat, back then
still produced in Eastern Germany, and thus not expensive. A few weeks later, I
found a sample of this telescope under the Christmas Tree, along with a few
astronomy books, and reasonable observations became possible for the first
time. Soon thereafter I began to take my first astrophotos, I started with hand-guided telelens photos.
As I grew older, my passion for astronomy, especially for extragalactic
astronomy (I love those galaxies...) deepened, and I decided to study
astronomy at university parallel to my course of studies in Technical Physics. I
found studying astronomy easy and enjoyable, and got my master's degree in
astronomy in 1997 and my doctorate in 2004. Both my diploma and my Ph.D. thesis
where about extragalactics, what else would you think? ;-) My fields of
research were the kinematics of early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies,
and the physical properties of the stellar population and the gas in Blue
Compact Dwarf Galaxies.
During time, my collection of telescopes grew, but I have always
specialized in scopes which are dedicated to astrophotography, or at least
also usable in that regard. However I also enjoy using them visually.
To read more about my telescopes, my
astrophotography setup and the equipment I use, read About these images.... As for my philosophy in
astrophotography, I go for esthetics, and not strictly for scientific content. A
scientifically correctly reduced CCD image will not look very attractive. I use nonlinear enhancement for my astrophotos, trying to get as much faint
structure and detail out of the deep-sky objects I photograph as possible, but I
still want it to look natural and pleasing to the eye. The motivation for
doing astrophotography has somewhat broadened during all those years: I wish to
show the beauty and the science of astronomical objects and of the night sky in
general to anyone who cares, to get people interested, even those who do not
have or take the time to go outside and see for themselves. For there is rarely
a more wonderful sight in nature than standing at night under a clear, dark
sky far from any disturbing artificial light and seeing myriads of stars
and the Milky Way running from horizon to horizon... That is why I like to go
observing at remote sites, where it gets as dark as possible, there I feel
somewhat closer to the sheer beauty of the sky.
About Howdii:
I got to know him in 1996, when comet Hyakutake stood on the night sky;
he contacted me because our observation sites back then were situated close to
each other, in the Weinviertel in Lower Austria. When we first met, I glanced
with something like contempt at his strange black 5.7" Maksutov-Newtonian telescope,
which seemed small to me (I used an 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope back then),
but that feeling pretty soon changed into admiration because that optics easily
outperformed my SCT! Regrettably, his favorite telescope is not built for
astrophotography, and a photographic version of that type is no longer
available...
I got to know Howdii as an expert in telescope optics, telescope testing, and
- of course - as an excellent observer, who likes to go for objects which others
describe as "impossible to observe" with the apertures he uses. I for sure learned a lot from him. His favorite
object class have nowadays become planetary nebulae, most of them extremely
faint fuzzies in any telescope below 18" of aperture, but still he usually
observes them with his 5.7" or his 8" Mak-Newtonian telescopes, and enjoys doing
that! Impossible to imagine ;-) Most of the time, when I take a "quick" look through his scope, I see nothing but blank sky, a few stars sprinkled across the field of
view at most. If I am lucky, after a few minutes a faint, faint nebulosity will
start to tickle my eyes... Hey, isn't that fun! His statement that he ruins some of
my photos because he lures me away from my astrophoto setup with his objects may
even contain some substance... ;-)
Together, we have spent many a night observing, and we have held our share of
speeches and presentations. I do hold Howdii in high regard as to his knowledge
and experience with optics, the star-test, observation techniques,
and - well - automobiles ;-)
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