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Contact information
e-mail
antilhue@adsl.tie.cl
.
website
http://www.verschatse.cl/home.htm
deceased (2017)
..
Biography
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My name is
Daniel Verschatse. I was born and raised in Flanders (Belgium).
When I was about 10 years old, fascination with the objects in the sky
grabbed me for the first time. Initially I satisfied my curiosity with
books. Then came the inevitable excursions into building a small
telescope: first with simple lenses, then with a self-made mirror. As a
student in the sixties, I worked nights, week-ends and during summer
recess to finance my first "real" telescope: a 102 mm (4") Polarex -
Unitron achromatic refractor with a 75 mm (3") guide-scope on a motor
driven equatorial mount. This dearly remembered instrument gave me my
first quality views of the moon and planets. It also enabled first
excursions into astrophotography.
The imaging bug got me ! Together with a friend we were
out every one of the rare clear nights, trying to record the objects on
35mm film. It was a long learning process eventually rewarded with the
publication in Sky & Telescope of our Mercury solar transit picture in
1968.
After graduating as a radio frequency engineer, I left
my native Belgium to start a technical-commercial career that took me to a
number of countries and left little room for my astronomical pastime. The
interest never waned though and in the early nineties my old love for
quality refractors and astrophotography was revived by the appearance of
the new generation Astro-Physics telescopes: fast f-ratio, virtually
color-free imaging instruments. I was hooked again !
A few years ago, my job brought me to Chile and I
grabbed the opportunity to make a childhood dream come true: my own
observatory under good skies ! It saw first light in November 2001. After
a rewarding re-start with film astrophotography, I quickly became a
believer in CCD imaging technology. Nowadays, nearly all of my work is CCD
imaging .
I live with my Chilean spouse and two daughters in
Santiago and run the South American branch of a German telecom components
manufacturer.
Areas of interest
high resolution
deep-sky imaging
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Astrophotography publications
.
Magazines
Astronomy,
Astronomie
Magazine (France),
Boletim de Astronomia SAC,
El Observador
(Puerto Rico),
Revista de la
Agrupacion de Astronomia de Santander (España),
Sky & Telescope
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Books
UNIVERSE - The
definitive visual Guide
Sky &
Telescope's "BEAUTIFUL UNIVERSE" 2005 Edition
"O século dos quanta" by Joao Varela - Editora Universidade de
Brasília, 2004 Edition
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Calendars
Official Calendar of
the VATICAN OBSERVATORY, June,2006
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Television
Patrick Moore's
"The Sky at Night" : BBC Television
program
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Websites
RC
Optical Systems website - Gallery
APOD - Astronomy
Picture of the Day - January 18th 2003
SEDS - Messier
Objects Astronomy Picture of the Day
Astro-Physics, Inc. Website - Gallery
.
CD-ROM
Imagine
the Universe - CD-ROM published by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
8th Edition - March 2004
Observing sites
Home Observatory
Visually from metropolitan Santiago with 10" f/5 Teleport Dobsonian
.
Remote Observatory
San Esteban near Los Andes (Region V) Chile
see:
http://astrosurf.com/antilhue/Observatory.htm
Astronomical Equipment
Telescopes
RCOS 14.5" Ritchey-Chretien
telescope
Astro-Physics 155-EDFS, f/7,2 refractor
Intes Micro (Moscow): model MN106 Maksutov-Newton telescope
Mounts
Astro-Physics
AP1200GTO
Astro-Physics AP900GTO
ALT ADN-5 mount controlled by FS-2 electronics
Cameras
SBIG STL-11000 ABG large
format CCD camera
SBIG ST-10XE NABG CCD camera with CFW-8 colour filter wheel
Philips Toucam PCVC
740K webcam
Pentax 67 (medium
format) and Pentax Spotmatic (35 mm) for film
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