okiscopey
06-09-2009, 11:58 PM
Yes, a new kid on the block ... or is it an old fogey?
Herewith, a few pictures of 'RPO' under construction in my backyard in beautiful downtown Kandos.
Kandos (altitude about 600 metres, population around 1300) is only 30 minutes' drive away from 'Wiruna', the ASNSW's dark-sky site, so a few IIS-ers will be familiar with the town and its cement works. OK, Kandos isn't exactly beautiful, but Sydney property prices made it look like paradise when I was looking to buy property after retirement. Luckily for star-gazing locals, the cement works doesn't throw any light in the sky, and there's a lot less dust than in the past.
The observatory is named after 'Rocky' after a nearby 900-metre sandstone peak, part of the Cumber Melon Range. Also visible from most of Kandos is 'Baldy', a self-explanatory name for an 1100m peak which carries the local TV and radio masts. (Thinks ... can I use the lights on these as artificial stars?)
After being hooked on astronomy since I was eight or nine, it's only taken me 54 years to acquire decent gear and somewhere to leave it set up. Retirement dollars and a move from the big smoke helped, but so did Brett Soames ('Bert') who I met on IIS when looking for a bigger pier (9-inch) than the 6-inch I'd already purchased.
My plan was to build a permanent observatory for visual and DSO-type imaging, big enough to accommodate two scopes - a wide-field refractor and something a bit longer. I considered a dome observatory for a while, but as I just love being buffeted by wind and drenched with dew, a roll-off was the logical choice.
Brett has worked like a trojan to design, pre-fabricate and build the observatory for me. It's a 'grand design' - a welded steel frame with Colorbond cladding on a 3.6m x 5m concrete slab. The split roof halves glide off quietly and effortlessly to the east and west on steel gantries by means of Merlin garage door motors. I can even make that happen using the remote gizmo from my deck 20 metres away! The gantries extend 2.7m either side of the end walls and are fixed in place on 1.2m-deep concrete footings. Part of the wall runs off with the roof, meaning the fixed walls are only 1.75 metres high, and the roof halves are designed with minimal bracing to ensure there's plenty of headroom above the scopes. A minimum amount of insulation has been applied to prevent condensation.
Brett had the plans approved by his local (Bathurst) civil engineering company, and my local council (Mid-Western) took only a week to approve the construction as a 'complying development'. It did cost $466 to submit the paperwork, not the $200-odd I was expecting, so I must have paid for the 'express service'.
It'll be a few weeks before I get the two systems installed (FSQ106ED + NEQ6 + 6-inch pier, and Mewlon 250 + EM200 + 9-inch pier) as I'm presently having top plates machined locally out of 25mm thick steel to take each of the mounts directly. Interestingly, the EM200 base design is almost identical to the NEQ6, except that the central projection (you know, the bit the mount turns on when doing an azimuth adjustment) is 30.0mm diameter in the EM200 and 29.7mm on the NEQ6. For the record, the 'azimuth pegs' are slightly different in design also.
The Mewlon's pier is going to be dynabolted onto an isolated concrete footing 0.5 metres diameter x 2 metres deep. 900kg of concrete ... that should stop things from moving! However this scope will be used visually until I've sorted out imaging with the FSQ. I gather from the cogniscenti in this place that the 3000mm focal length might be a bit of a imaging challenge!
I'm going to bolt the 6-in pier with the FSQ/NEQ6 pier directly to the slab, as I figure 'wide-field' means 'less prone to vibration'. Hope I'm not making a mistake there.
Progress on other fronts:
Computer. Although I'm a Mac person, I went out and bought a PC recently (is this progress?!) as it looked like things would be easier on that platform. I'll be following Brett's lead for the forseeable future: EQMOD / Cartes du Ciel / PHD and all that sort of stuff. I know I'm in for a big learning curve but at my age that's good to keep the brain alive. At least I don't have to do those awful cryptic crosswords.
Camera: No astro camera yet ... but the QSI 583wsg looks like it'll do two jobs very well: (1) deliver decent photos, and (2) reduce my remaining bank balance to zero.
That's about it for now. I'll post an update when some major advance or disaster occurs.
Herewith, a few pictures of 'RPO' under construction in my backyard in beautiful downtown Kandos.
Kandos (altitude about 600 metres, population around 1300) is only 30 minutes' drive away from 'Wiruna', the ASNSW's dark-sky site, so a few IIS-ers will be familiar with the town and its cement works. OK, Kandos isn't exactly beautiful, but Sydney property prices made it look like paradise when I was looking to buy property after retirement. Luckily for star-gazing locals, the cement works doesn't throw any light in the sky, and there's a lot less dust than in the past.
The observatory is named after 'Rocky' after a nearby 900-metre sandstone peak, part of the Cumber Melon Range. Also visible from most of Kandos is 'Baldy', a self-explanatory name for an 1100m peak which carries the local TV and radio masts. (Thinks ... can I use the lights on these as artificial stars?)
After being hooked on astronomy since I was eight or nine, it's only taken me 54 years to acquire decent gear and somewhere to leave it set up. Retirement dollars and a move from the big smoke helped, but so did Brett Soames ('Bert') who I met on IIS when looking for a bigger pier (9-inch) than the 6-inch I'd already purchased.
My plan was to build a permanent observatory for visual and DSO-type imaging, big enough to accommodate two scopes - a wide-field refractor and something a bit longer. I considered a dome observatory for a while, but as I just love being buffeted by wind and drenched with dew, a roll-off was the logical choice.
Brett has worked like a trojan to design, pre-fabricate and build the observatory for me. It's a 'grand design' - a welded steel frame with Colorbond cladding on a 3.6m x 5m concrete slab. The split roof halves glide off quietly and effortlessly to the east and west on steel gantries by means of Merlin garage door motors. I can even make that happen using the remote gizmo from my deck 20 metres away! The gantries extend 2.7m either side of the end walls and are fixed in place on 1.2m-deep concrete footings. Part of the wall runs off with the roof, meaning the fixed walls are only 1.75 metres high, and the roof halves are designed with minimal bracing to ensure there's plenty of headroom above the scopes. A minimum amount of insulation has been applied to prevent condensation.
Brett had the plans approved by his local (Bathurst) civil engineering company, and my local council (Mid-Western) took only a week to approve the construction as a 'complying development'. It did cost $466 to submit the paperwork, not the $200-odd I was expecting, so I must have paid for the 'express service'.
It'll be a few weeks before I get the two systems installed (FSQ106ED + NEQ6 + 6-inch pier, and Mewlon 250 + EM200 + 9-inch pier) as I'm presently having top plates machined locally out of 25mm thick steel to take each of the mounts directly. Interestingly, the EM200 base design is almost identical to the NEQ6, except that the central projection (you know, the bit the mount turns on when doing an azimuth adjustment) is 30.0mm diameter in the EM200 and 29.7mm on the NEQ6. For the record, the 'azimuth pegs' are slightly different in design also.
The Mewlon's pier is going to be dynabolted onto an isolated concrete footing 0.5 metres diameter x 2 metres deep. 900kg of concrete ... that should stop things from moving! However this scope will be used visually until I've sorted out imaging with the FSQ. I gather from the cogniscenti in this place that the 3000mm focal length might be a bit of a imaging challenge!
I'm going to bolt the 6-in pier with the FSQ/NEQ6 pier directly to the slab, as I figure 'wide-field' means 'less prone to vibration'. Hope I'm not making a mistake there.
Progress on other fronts:
Computer. Although I'm a Mac person, I went out and bought a PC recently (is this progress?!) as it looked like things would be easier on that platform. I'll be following Brett's lead for the forseeable future: EQMOD / Cartes du Ciel / PHD and all that sort of stuff. I know I'm in for a big learning curve but at my age that's good to keep the brain alive. At least I don't have to do those awful cryptic crosswords.
Camera: No astro camera yet ... but the QSI 583wsg looks like it'll do two jobs very well: (1) deliver decent photos, and (2) reduce my remaining bank balance to zero.
That's about it for now. I'll post an update when some major advance or disaster occurs.