JogunAstro

The Observatory




After many months of wheeling the ASGT in and out of the house I made up my mind that I needed an observatory. I researched the many ideas that other individuals had used. The shed I would have to build couldn't be too large, since I have a fairly narrow back yard. In addition, my wife and I have been looking to move to a place where there is less light pollution, so I didn't want to spend a lot of time and money building anything permanent. I found it amazing at the multitude of ways that people built their observatories--from permanent piers with desert storm covers to house size domes with everything including the kitchen sink and sleeping quarters. The design that I decided would fit my needs was a Rubbermaid shed with flip up roof panels.

The size of the shed is 7 ft X 7 ft X 7.5 ft. This would suffice for the CGE 1100 along with its tripod and would leave enough room for a computer area and and some usable storage space, including shelves.

The modifications required to convert this garden shed into a backyard observatory were fairly minimal, mainly requiring reinforcing the side walls to support the loads imposed by swinging the roof open.

The roof panels are opened by using a long wooden pole pushed against the top of the panels. The panels are closed by pulling on one of the ropes while supporting the top of the panel with the pole.

The floor was covered with interlocking rubber mats in order to make it more foot comfortable.

The tripod suppord platform is isolated from the shed floor by the use of brick columns that run through holes cut into the shed floor. The brick columns are mounted on paving stones lying on a compacted sand/gravel bed. Electrical power was run from the house through buried condiut and interfaced with a GFCI module. The computer area has red lighting for general illumination and a low power white bulb for those times when addiitional light is needed. Clamp on lamps provide additional illumination and are used as the lighting source for taking flat frames.

The flip up panels and the surrounding houses limit my lower viewing angle to about 35°, which is adequate for imaging. However, my field of view to the south is non-existent due to tall trees. The scope and cameras are controlled from my home computer through the observatory computer using RealVNC over a wireless network. Future plans are to run Cat 5 network cable and hardwire connect the host/client computers. The wireless setup is too slow and suffers from frequent dropouts.

Construction Details

Oh yeah--the informal name of the shed is The Dolly Observatory because:

1. It has a red light area
2. It has a coat of many colors
3. It is devoted to the study of heavenly bodies

Tandem Mounting
Counterweights
The Office

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© 2006 J. A. Jaramillo