Nearly 2 years after moving from Grose Vale, on the outskirts of Sydney, to some acreage at Quialigo NSW, I've started rebuilding my Obs - Bells Observatory
V2.0. The location has good visibility and dark, transparent skies (Bortle class 2). See daytime panorama taken from where the Obs will sit
HERE.
My todo list is
very long so it will be quite some time before I reach first light, but ya gotta start somewhere!!
So far I've:
- Dug the pier footing hole
- Built the form so I can do the footing and the pier column in a single pour (al la Mike S' Terroux obs)
- Cut the formatube to size
- Assembled the pier bolts in a jig ready for embedment into the concrete pier column
- Determined the location of true south (so I can align the bolt pattern) using a post's shadow produced at the sun's meridian transit time
Only a few small things left before the concrete pour now.
I'll be getting a raised wooden deck build by a professional sometime in October I think - 4.2m square. My old Obs was only sitting on a 2.5m square deck and that wasn't enough to allow me to walk around the 2.3m diam Obs for cleaning and easy dome assembly. Getting in and out carrying heavy equipment was a little dodgy too.
You can see all progress pics with commentary HERE.