Just a suggestion that works on old fibreglass boats, pressure blast all the lichen and dirt off. Rough up the exterior gel coat and apply a two pack epoxy primer ( available from most boat supply stores like Whitworths (online). Wear a proper respirator. You can roll it on and tip it off with a brush. That will seal the exterior and prevent water getting to the glass. You can spray or roll on a topcoat. Or get a boat painter to come out and do it for you, but it can cost.
Have fun.
i just used dishwashng liquid in copious quantities and a stiff and soft brush. dont use the high pressure washer or you will blast holes in it. i then used fibreglass polish to bring my dome up
I did not mean that you should use a petrol powered pavement type pressure washer, the little electric ones used to wash cars will do. Obviously only use enough pressure to remove the lichen and dirt. The epoxy primer is only needed if the gel coat has cracked through or flaked off, if the gel coat is just uv damaged, just sand it to key the paint and put some paint on it.
I use a high pressure sprayer , then give my Obs a wash with auto-detergent and hot water. There are many marine polishing compounds on the market, which I'm sure you can get advice on which is best from your local boating store/supplier.
Strongly suggest you buy about 8 bottles of the spray on Exit Mould and a oodles of chuck wipes and a set of leather gardening gloves - works brilliantly for removing mould. I was gifted a dome that was covered in mould and gunk and about four hours work with hot water and that much exit mould fixed things brilliantly!
Secondly - the Max Dome kit works really well - suggest you will get most value from a backyard observatory with just the dome rotation kit (vs the slit open and close - which needs a new dome slit and motor. There is a long wait time on these kits and the instructions aren't well printed - so it worth while seeing one in operation and getting advise from someone who has retro fitted on recently - glad to give more feedback if that helps - did mine last year.
Next if your mount's rotation point isn't directly under the dome's rotation point - the East West offset parameter should have its sign (+/-) swapped for our hemisphere - the documentation is definitely wrong for our hemisphere.
Lastly the Mad Dome rotation software hub - the free version didn't work reliably - whereas the one build into MaximDl v5 worked fine - you need to plan what software will drive your Max Dome kit.
Once it all works well - and it eventually will - it gives you a great feeling of accomplishment - especially if your remote control everything from your house where its nice and warm!
Thanks for the advice everyone, I much appreciate it! :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Humm...its not so bad..looks like mine
Seriously, it should scrub up fine.
Hopefully yours is in better condition, this one won't even rotate freely, hopefully just due to the large accumulation of wasp nests between the dome and the lip it rotates on.
I'm honestly not too fussed on cosmetics, I'm mostly interested in ensuring its longevity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by g__day
Strongly suggest you buy about 8 bottles of the spray on Exit Mould and a oodles of chuck wipes and a set of leather gardening gloves - works brilliantly for removing mould. I was gifted a dome that was covered in mould and gunk and about four hours work with hot water and that much exit mould fixed things brilliantly!
Secondly - the Max Dome kit works really well - suggest you will get most value from a backyard observatory with just the dome rotation kit (vs the slit open and close - which needs a new dome slit and motor. There is a long wait time on these kits and the instructions aren't well printed - so it worth while seeing one in operation and getting advise from someone who has retro fitted on recently - glad to give more feedback if that helps - did mine last year.
Next if your mount's rotation point isn't directly under the dome's rotation point - the East West offset parameter should have its sign (+/-) swapped for our hemisphere - the documentation is definitely wrong for our hemisphere.
Lastly the Mad Dome rotation software hub - the free version didn't work reliably - whereas the one build into MaximDl v5 worked fine - you need to plan what software will drive your Max Dome kit.
Once it all works well - and it eventually will - it gives you a great feeling of accomplishment - especially if your remote control everything from your house where its nice and warm!
Thanks Matthew! I'm essentially planning on treating this as a remote obs, so I'll be wanting both shutter and rotation control. My wife is complaining about barely seeing me due to me always being up fiddling with my gear so I'm going to try and automate everything and get comms between the obs and the house (~350m away) so I can tinker with guiding etc from the living room.
I've contacted Sirius for a quote on the automation kit. Any idea how long the lead time is? They haven't mentioned that so far. Hopefully not too long, but then it'll be a while before I can get the deck/pad put in and this thing cleaned up and relocated anyway.
I waited about 3 months - from memory the main hold up was sourcing the motors from Italy - then when they finally arrived they shipped them to Australia rather then flew them! Sirius have set order times each week or month - ask them when their next order goes in and place your order a few days before their order dates to minimise wait times.
How do you plan to get comms to the observatory if its 350 metres away from your house - that's a bit far to run cat6 cable without a repeater or two isn't it? Still once you have power and IP signal going to your observatory - and it all mounted up and tuned - you'll be amazed how much time you save!
Another pointer is a lot of gear may still require serial cables (focusers, some mounts, the Maxdome kit) etc. This means you have to consider either get an older PC or 1 or 2 PCI adapter boards that each have 2-4 serial connectors (e.g Sunnix), or get a really high quality USB2 to 4 port Serial hub - like the kind Peter Ward uses in his obs (NPort). The cheap ones are notiorously bad on geting the serial cable to work - their chipset isn't somehow completely reliable with signalling required.
I would from experience now suggest run say 4m USB3 cable from Astrolab PC to your pier - and place a powered 7 port USB3 / 2 hub on your pier - this makes cabling much simpler than trying to have 15 cables going from your gear back to your PC! I also run power to a 5 port surge protected board board which I sticky velcro to the pier - so all signal and mains power is available mide way up the pier.
Lastly a dehumidifer (Kogan), timer switches, and surge protection and a decent earth are all good ideas. I use an Online (not back up or stand-by) UPS and put serial surge protectors on all the serial cables (the kind petrol stations use to link their pumps to the cash registers). I run the mount of a Lab power supply and place both it and the UPS and other sensitive electronics in a plastic box - just to minimise the chance of rain hitting it whilst the dome is open in case I miss the start of a brief rain storm.
Well Lee, that doesn't look to dissimilar to how mine looked when I picked it up in late 2012 from someones backyard. Mine is circa 1996 and my approach when I got it was to... do absolutely no cleaning at all Mine rotates ok although it does have one slight sticking point that could play havoc with a motorised system?...I'm manual push to though
Personally when I ever get around to cleaning mine I recon good'ol warm soapy water and rinse off with a garden hose would be perfectly adequate
Of course after the good clean, a close inspection of the fibre glass should tell you pretty quickly if it is going to crack and leak, or not..?
Lee, after all that good advice and other ways of fixing the problem, I'm sure a good scrub will bring it back to life.
You saved a heap on a new one, enjoy.
I waited about 3 months - from memory the main hold up was sourcing the motors from Italy - then when they finally arrived they shipped them to Australia rather then flew them! Sirius have set order times each week or month - ask them when their next order goes in and place your order a few days before their order dates to minimise wait times.
How do you plan to get comms to the observatory if its 350 metres away from your house - that's a bit far to run cat6 cable without a repeater or two isn't it? Still once you have power and IP signal going to your observatory - and it all mounted up and tuned - you'll be amazed how much time you save!
Another pointer is a lot of gear may still require serial cables (focusers, some mounts, the Maxdome kit) etc. This means you have to consider either get an older PC or 1 or 2 PCI adapter boards that each have 2-4 serial connectors (e.g Sunnix), or get a really high quality USB2 to 4 port Serial hub - like the kind Peter Ward uses in his obs (NPort). The cheap ones are notiorously bad on geting the serial cable to work - their chipset isn't somehow completely reliable with signalling required.
I would from experience now suggest run say 4m USB3 cable from Astrolab PC to your pier - and place a powered 7 port USB3 / 2 hub on your pier - this makes cabling much simpler than trying to have 15 cables going from your gear back to your PC! I also run power to a 5 port surge protected board board which I sticky velcro to the pier - so all signal and mains power is available mide way up the pier.
Lastly a dehumidifer (Kogan), timer switches, and surge protection and a decent earth are all good ideas. I use an Online (not back up or stand-by) UPS and put serial surge protectors on all the serial cables (the kind petrol stations use to link their pumps to the cash registers). I run the mount of a Lab power supply and place both it and the UPS and other sensitive electronics in a plastic box - just to minimise the chance of rain hitting it whilst the dome is open in case I miss the start of a brief rain storm.
Good luck!
Matthew
Thanks Matthew, appreciate all the advice!
I'm planning to use a couple of long range wireless access points for comms. Been having some issues but I think that might be related to the computer using 2.4Ghz wifi and interference with the ASI 1600 which is USB 3. Should be able to sort that out ok.
I don't have mains power up there so everything is currently, and will continue to be, running off a series of batteries hooked up to a solar panel.
Not sure what I'm going to do about switching the devices on and off yet. Mount hub pro looked interesting, but it only has 3-4 USB ports, and apparently it can bug out depending on whether the computer or the hub is powered first, which might be difficult to control. I found another IP power switch that I think has ASCOM support but that was "just that" and from memory $395US + shipping.
I got the final quote from Sirius today and it's a lot more costly than expected: $10,099 + postage + handling + insurance for the dome rotation kit, shutter (replacement shutter + motors etc) kit, and the maxdome system. That's waaaaay out of the budget, so I'm going to be looking into some DIY options.
Thinking about trying to mount an Intel NUC to the scope to control everything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Well Lee, that doesn't look to dissimilar to how mine looked when I picked it up in late 2012 from someones backyard. Mine is circa 1996 and my approach when I got it was to... do absolutely no cleaning at all Mine rotates ok although it does have one slight sticking point that could play havoc with a motorised system?...I'm manual push to though
Personally when I ever get around to cleaning mine I recon good'ol warm soapy water and rinse off with a garden hose would be perfectly adequate
Of course after the good clean, a close inspection of the fibre glass should tell you pretty quickly if it is going to crack and leak, or not..?
Good luck with the project
Mike
hah, I like your approach Mike! I was mostly worried that it would need maintenance or start to fall apart on me. I know nothing about maintaining fibreglass. I'll give the thing a good clean and then see how it looks before deciding whether to paint or gel coat it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by leon
Lee, after all that good advice and other ways of fixing the problem, I'm sure a good scrub will bring it back to life.
You saved a heap on a new one, enjoy.
Leon
Thanks Leon! Sure did save a bunch compared to a new one
When I bought in Oct last year the rotation only kit from Sirius was about $3,500 + ~ $250 shipping + $110 in packaging plus handling and the shutter kit was quoted around $4,700 + shipping - ponder if prices have risen lately? You can always just wander down at the start of your run to open the dome and switch on gear and then again at the end of the night to close it - guess that would be a 5 minute walk both ways or 1 minute on a bike!
When I bought in Oct last year the rotation only kit from Sirius was about $3,500 + ~ $250 shipping + $110 in packaging plus handling and the shutter kit was quoted around $4,700 + shipping - ponder if prices have risen lately? You can always just wander down at the start of your run to open the dome and switch on gear and then again at the end of the night to close it - guess that would be a 5 minute walk both ways or 1 minute on a bike!
IP over coax could be an option - I'll see how these access points work out. Things are looking promising now but I won't know for sure until I get my new computer.
The prices I was quoted are actually cheaper than that, but I'm also including the quoted cost of Maxdome which is an additional 3.5k
I want my gear to be able to image while I sleep. I only get a couple of hours of imaging on a clear night at the moment because I have to pack up at about 10pm (usually 9:30), and I don't want to be getting up in the middle of the night to shut things up.
I'm considering a few options but intend to motorise/automate it myself now. It might take up a bit of my time for a while, but it's not going to cost me over 10k, I'm certain of that.
When you add image while you sleep - that means to me you need:
1. A weather sensor - like a Boltwood - which will sense rain and/or clouds and send a message to the dome to close
2. An astro lab management software suite - like ACP - where you can with the right equipment possible set up many nights of imaging run processing - let it manage the scheduling on the fly and optimise it for your night sky quality and target position.
Unfortunately the Sirius gear just seems to get more and more expensive particularly when you are "upgrading" an existing dome. When I bought my observatory I got the Maxdome system for dome rotation only and was shocked when I then priced an upgrade to powered shutter.
For reliable and reasonably priced long range wifi check out Ubiquity products. They make "enterprise grade" devices which seem to me to be more capable than consumer grade stuff. I made a rock solid connection over 1100 metres with their Nanostation devices which were only around $70 each (a couple of years ago). Many of their devices are 12 Volt powered and 12 power over Ethernet connectors are cheaply available (to get power to the external device from your Observatory over the same cable that will bring the network inside). Simple to set up if you have or can learn some basic networking skills.
Ian
I image while I sleep now, with SGP managing everything in the run. I don't mind getting up to close the roof when the run is done, just set my phone alarm to wake me up and take a walk then go back to bed. Cheap solution, but your system has to be stable. I think SGP also has the ability to trigger an alert if a sequence stops/abends for some reason, but I don't have that working yet. Teamviewer can give you monitoring capability right from your bedside if you wish (my goal), and your probably within wifi range for that (with an extender). It doesn't need to be expensive.
When I get auto focus up and running I'll be able to get a decent nights sleep while imaging. At the moment I get up every hour or two to refocus. Get up at 5:30 to pack up, bring inside and let it dry off for the day. I leave for work at 6:10.
When you add image while you sleep - that means to me you need:
1. A weather sensor - like a Boltwood - which will sense rain and/or clouds and send a message to the dome to close
2. An astro lab management software suite - like ACP - where you can with the right equipment possible set up many nights of imaging run processing - let it manage the scheduling on the fly and optimise it for your night sky quality and target position.
All very do able I hear - but not terribly cheap!
Not necessarily. Having automatic target optimisation is definitely a nice to have, rather than a must. I'm also a software developer, so I could write my own solution if necessary.
Weather sensing is also a nice to have -- big difference between going to bed with the gear scheduled to close up in a couple of hours vs automatic cloud / rain sensor and opening up automatically.
Finally, there's much cheaper options than a Boltwood.
Quote:
Originally Posted by w0mbat
Unfortunately the Sirius gear just seems to get more and more expensive particularly when you are "upgrading" an existing dome. When I bought my observatory I got the Maxdome system for dome rotation only and was shocked when I then priced an upgrade to powered shutter.
For reliable and reasonably priced long range wifi check out Ubiquity products. They make "enterprise grade" devices which seem to me to be more capable than consumer grade stuff. I made a rock solid connection over 1100 metres with their Nanostation devices which were only around $70 each (a couple of years ago). Many of their devices are 12 Volt powered and 12 power over Ethernet connectors are cheaply available (to get power to the external device from your Observatory over the same cable that will bring the network inside). Simple to set up if you have or can learn some basic networking skills.
Ian
Thanks Ian :-)
Yeah, I was surprised by the cost of the kit. I'd seen the "Dome and shutter kit" advertised somewhere for 3.5k and assumed that included motors etc, but it turned out it was just Maxdome, so the >10k quote was an unwelcome surprise.
I've actually already bought a few TP-Link wireless access points and a dc -> poe injector to live up at the observatory so I'll see how I go with those.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glend
I image while I sleep now, with SGP managing everything in the run. I don't mind getting up to close the roof when the run is done, just set my phone alarm to wake me up and take a walk then go back to bed. Cheap solution, but your system has to be stable. I think SGP also has the ability to trigger an alert if a sequence stops/abends for some reason, but I don't have that working yet. Teamviewer can give you monitoring capability right from your bedside if you wish (my goal), and your probably within wifi range for that (with an extender). It doesn't need to be expensive.
Yeah, SGP does have alarming functionality but it requires it to be connected to the net, which mine won't be. I'll probably use Teamviewer as the new computer that I ordered yesterday is coming with Windows 10 Home, so no remote desktop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmos
When I get auto focus up and running I'll be able to get a decent nights sleep while imaging. At the moment I get up every hour or two to refocus. Get up at 5:30 to pack up, bring inside and let it dry off for the day. I leave for work at 6:10.
You and Glen both must have understanding partners! Half the reason I'm doing this is because my wife is a bit unimpressed with the impact my hobby is having, let alone setting alarms and waking her up multiple times a night!
You and Glen both must have understanding partners! Half the reason I'm doing this is because my wife is a bit unimpressed with the impact my hobby is having, let alone setting alarms and waking her up multiple times a night!
<--- Single Still looking for that astronomy addicted wife
Still looking for that astronomy addicted wife 
