Telescope Reviews: Post a pic. of your observatory!

Here's a picture of the observatory I built in my back yard last summer. I live about 3.5 miles from the center of downtown Baltimore. The building is octagonal in shape with a "diameter" of eight feet, and is all wood construction, including the dome. The base of the observatory is built like a standard deck and suspended about 6" above the ground on 8 4x4 posts. I kept the floor open to allow circulation through the building, which has worked out very well. The walls are about 42" high, The dome rolls on 8 3" plastic castors, and is kept "centered" by 4 horizontally-mounted garage door pullies that ride on a thin aluminum strip which is attached to the inside wall of the building. The dome was modeled to some degree after the one housing the WYIN (sp?) Telescope at Kitt Peak. Its basically five squares and four triangles. I posted something about it last summer if you're interested in slightly more detail.

The image below shows a view through the entry door. The building houses a C14 on CGE mount. I have a small TV table that holds my laptop, which connects to the CGE as well as to main (DSI-II) and guide (DSI-I) cameras. I had planned to add a warm room to my garage which is only a few feet behind the observatory. In the end I decided to use a VNC program to control everything from the desktop computer in my study. I still have to rotate the dome myself, and must focus & change filters at the telescope. For me that's fine because I like to be in the obs next to the scope for any large slews anyway. In the second image you can see, just left of the pier, one of the 8 wheels the dome rolls on. Just left of that, near the picture's edge, you can see one of the four horizontally-mounted retaining wheels and the track it rides on.

According to my notes I used the telescope 77 nights last year. I previously had an observatory some distance NW of Baltimore in much darker skies, but the 90-minute drive each way limited my usage. I find that having something just outside the back door far outweighs the improved background that the darker site affords. The skies here are about 4.0 mag on a good night; my darker sky site was between 5.5 and 6.0.

Its definitely the very best "accessory" I've ever added! Total cost was about $2500 (including $400 to have some concrete hauled away) and took about 7 weeks to build.

Mike

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14" Celestron CGE (two of 'em)
Soupy, orange, mag 4. skies (woof!)
ST9-XE, ST8-XME
ssp-3 photometer
Mira Pro UE7 & ProScript, IDL v7.1, AIP4Win, MaxIm DL, TheSky6 Pro, PC-IRAF 2.14.1
Way too many white squares in the graphic, below