Hi everyone.
Its been about a year in the planning and testing to make sure all the software and communications are working for my new remote observatory, which is situated in the dark skies of the WA wheatbelt some 200km inland from the south coast. I will operate it from my home in Albany.
Now I have started the structure build. I had read evidence that a portion of the seeing effects in our images come from within 10 or so meters above the ground. I had also seen another observatory that was elevated and spoke with the gentleman who operates it and he confirmed the extra height improved his seeing conditions.
So I have decided to try it out, the telescope will observe from about 8 - 8.5m above the ground in an elevated 3.6 x 3.6m observatory. The surrounding Roll off roof observatory is built on a structure with 8 concrete piles going into the ground, while the telescope sits atop a "quadpod" pier that goes through the observatory floor and is also held down with 5 similar concrete piles that go into the ground, yet to be built.
I may get some comments saying it wont make a difference, and it may not to be honest, but I'm interested to find out
from the initial photos, the frame is 6m high, and the observatory platform sits on top of that and extends the floor to 7m high. The frame will have a ladder to climb up on, which then goes into the cage that can be seen welded to the side of the platform. This also serves as a walkway to the observatory door, and on the way, access to things like Cell reception aerials and allsky cameras and security cameras. the walls of the observatory will be made from 100mm sandwich panel.
I hope you enjoy the progress.
To power the observatory i will use a bank of solar panels and either lead carbon or Lithium batteries in a 48Volt bank.
Thankyou to Troypiggo, Steven Mohr and Terry Robison who have all helped me out along the way. Thanks Guys
Josh