Astronomical Applications of CCDs in Hungary — the First Steps and Future Plans

Abstract

The first century of non-visual astronomical image detection in Hungary was devoted exclusively to photography. The most famous Hungarian astronomers and astrophysicists of the last century were the pioneers of astrophotography too. The very first exhaustive description of photography as a scientific method was the one by Konkoly-Thege about astronomical photography in 1887. In his book one can find some interesting images printed of the plates taken by his friend and colleague, the enthusiastic astrophotographer J. Gothard, who was the first to demonstrate that the well-known bright planetary in Lyra (M 57 or the Ring Nebula) contains an extremely faint central star. His discovery, which opened new fields for astrophysics, was contested for a long time because his foreign contemporaries were unable to repeat this feat of arms.