Thankyou for your replies everyone.
Paul, thanks for writing, I dont want to be servicing or pulling it down from that height, so I have to think of as much as i can now
The dust extraction is actually a fan (2 now, one axial the other centrifugal), that blows air into the room and out through small gaps, keeping the inside air pressure a little above atmospheric. Hopefully this keeps out most of the dust.
So it appears true that there are resolution gains, even if small, by elevating the telescope. It will certainly be an interesting first few nights of data capture to see how things go. For sure, to make use of any resolution gains, one would need a telescope that can take advantage of that, and so focal length and image scale play a significant role here.
Ill be imaging at 2.5m F.L. with an image scale of 0.73"/Pix. One of the guys I spoke with was Russell Croman, he has a RCOS 20" in an elevated observatory, and he said he recons he got about (don't quote me or him on this) 0.25" better FWHM in his elevated dome.
Hi Eric, thankyou for writing. I can't say I have seen that article, but that is an interesting graph you have supplied. It's possible i could reduce the height if i really needed to, but that is a lot of work
My first course of action would be to sheet the outer frame in sheet iron to protect the pier from the wind, and see how that goes.
Josh