Woodspring Observatory

[Windston (Dan)]

Hi everyone,


At long last I've finally started to make progress on my observatory build. I'm fortunate enough to have access to some bortle 2 skies just 45m away from my home in Toowoomba on our family dairy farm (where I grew up). 10x4m slab, 3x4m warm room. Going to be able to easily fit 6 scopes, at least 2 of which will be mine.
Looking at providing another avenue for hosting gear for folks in the Queensland area once it's completed. Located in Kulpi, about 2 hours west of Brisbane.

Internet is provided by starlink, power at least during the day is provided by 25kw of solar on a nearby hayshed that I installed as a method of drought proofing the farm, so the shed will be air conditioned during the day to keep everything cool during summer.
Will also provide 1tb of storage locally per pier as a way to easily store data and if all goes to plan, a vm with decent processing power so users can pre-process data on site before uploading a stack to their home PC's.

Each pier will also have its own dedicated Ethernet, 240Vac GPOs and 12Vdc (or whatever voltage you need) psu fed from a board in the warm room so that it's kept out of the weather, and each pier will be on its own circuit to minimise nuisance tripping.

I'll be out there at least 1 weekend per month, but my father is on site 4 days a week if equipment needs to be power cycled (anything simple). I also work 20m away every day, so really if need be I can fix problems in short order.
The build process has been a lot of fun and a very good learning experience for fabrication and building.

Looking to have it operational early new year. If you're interested, send me a pm.

Thanks for reading, clear skies,
Dan

[kencas (Ken)]

My retirement dream. Sell up from Brisbane and buy a small block of land somewhere in the Downs area with dark skies so I can enjoy the skies at a whim...

[Windston (Dan)]

Originally Posted by kencas

My retirement dream. Sell up from Brisbane and buy a small block of land somewhere in the Downs area with dark skies so I can enjoy the skies at a whim...

I was lucky enough to grow up in that situation, the winter milky way always captivated me as a kid.
It sounds silly to say but I always feel uneasy in cities where there's so much light pollution that you can only see a handful of stars.