New "Office" Observatory

[Hagar]

It should be called the doghouse but the name has already gone.

I have just ordered and paid for a Metal Lathe and Milling Machine and quite a bit of tooling for both when out of the blue an add appeared in here selling a Sirius Home dome for an almost give away price. The observatory was brand new and still on the packing crate wrapped in plastic. I enquired and won the sale. I then had to break the news to my other half with quite a speal on how good a deal it was and how if my aged mother next door died I would have to try and move my old ROR obs into my backyard. Something of a problem as my backyard is only the size of a postage stamp.

After a couple of very quiet and peacefull nights with only the dog talking to me I went down to Melbourne with a 10' X 6' trailler on the back of my truck to pick up the observatory, lathe and milling machine.

On the Sunday afternoon I went round to Darrens place (desler) and picked him up and off we went to pick up this little observatory. Packaged up on a made pallet it was 8' X 6' and weighed in at 250KG.
Quite a job getting it on but at least I had 1/16" clearance on each side of the trailler to play with and with Darren and the young bloke who owned it to help we got it on the trailler.

Monday morning I went to pick up the lathe , mill and other goodies and to my surprise they poked it in the back of my truck using a fork lift. at 180KG it was quite an effort to extracate from the truck but that is another story on it's own.

I got home with my load in tow and on board. Used a crow bar to bar it off the trailler and onto the front weed bed, I was going to say lawn but that would be a twist on words.

I finally decided where it was going to be positioned and set about building a deck to mount it on. The deck is strong enough to park a car on, being made of a supported frame of 8 X 2.4M X 50mm treated pine sleepers and a top deck of 150mm X 19mm treated pine. This was the cheapest material I could find in an endeavour to keep the peace.

Once the deck was built I proceeded to build the Observatory, paying attention to the assembly manual which all in all was pretty good. The only thing lacking was some detail on fitting the wheels to the dome.

I have attached photos of the process and please note the tiny backyard this dome had to fit into. No planning permit was required because it came in under 3M high and was not attached to the house. So that was my big win after the original purchase.

Hopefully dome rotation will follow soon.
Just a note on the pier: It is burried direct in the ground 1.2 M underground with 400mm of concrete on each side so it shouldn't move and is made from 150mm medium walled pipe and boy was it heavy to lift into the hole.

Here it is. I'm suitably chuffed. It's still quiet at home but she is mellowing to it slowly.
The first photo shows my current roll off roof observatory in my 93 year old mothers backyard next door. At least now I can insure everything on my contents insurance.

[Hagar]

Now just a lot of internals to do.

[leon]

Wow Doug that is awesome mate, :eyepop: looks the part in that yard of yours, nice find indeed ;)

Leon :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

looks a work of art Doug

[erick]

A lathe, a milling machine and an observatory at a give-away price - Heaven! :love: Congrats Doug. :thumbsup:

[dannat]

looks terrific

[ballaratdragons]

Gee that looks great.
Well done Doug. :)

Also looks like a good view of most of the sky :thumbsup:

[snowyskiesau]

Never mind the astronomy stuff, where are the pictures of the mill and lathe?

[Tandum]

Looking good Doug. Better get the boss back on side, I can see a motor drive coming on :D

[astroron]

What a Find:D and a truly picturesque setting for you dome Doug:eyepop:
I hope after all the dust has settled;) you have many happy hours in your dome :thumbsup:
Cheers

[Dave47tuc]

Looks super Doug :thumbsup: I really like the pics of the Obs, with the hills in the background :thumbsup:
There is nothing like having an observatory in your back yard :)

Can I ask, have you had any comments from the neighbours ?

[mill]

You better get all the knives out of the house Doug :P
Looking good (the obs) :thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

You've got the best looking backyard in town now!!

[Hagar]

The old lass next door said it looks good. (My mother) and the old gent behind has severe Macular degeneration and said he wished he could see it. So no problems with the neighbours, in fact they are both quite supportive.
Lucky me hey.

[Hagar]

Thanks for the comments everyone. The building stage was the easy part. Now for a proper floor, power, data and start to move it all accross from the old to the new. It will probably be a good time to take stock and get rid of some of the redundant junk I have aquired. In the mean time everything is set up and running in the old office. I may wait till the full moon to make the move.

[RobF]

Wow, looking good Doug. Way to go.
What a special place you're in too, nestled in the ranges.

[Hagar]

Thanks Rob, yes it's a lovely place to live for sure but the hills have their disadvantages for astronomy. The thermals off them there hills can be a real problem with imaging. The other big problem is the lack of wind. I know it sounds funny but living in the valley we get very little wind down here but it can and often does blow a gale up high causing quite a bit of distortion. Still it is a nice place to live.

[allan gould]

Doug
Excellent with the dome purchase. You have to get it motorised or you will spent ALL your time out there and not with the other half. Hope you have great times in it with that "Wide Vista" site.
Allan

[Astroman]

Excellent purchase and one that will get used quite often I'd say. Nice work on the Lathe and Mill too, must upgrade my old 1930's metal lathe one day :D BTW whats the brand of the lathe and Mill? (unless I overlooked it somewhere)

[Hagar]

Hi Andrew, I ended up buying a Sieg C6 lathe and the Sieg X2 mill. Just chinese made but seem reasonable quality, not that I have had much time to play with either of them yet. I have a couple of small projects to do but need to have my imaging setup running first. Once the Obs is finished and everything moved accross and the shed cleaned up again I will give it a good work out.

[RobF]

Please keep us up to date on how you go with the lathe too Doug. You can't be in this hobby and not ponder how fantastic it would be to be able to run up your own adaptors etc as the need arises...

[Paul Haese]

Yes, heard this was going to happen. I can imagine what your wife had to say about all this. LOL.

Man those hills would crap me off if I was living there. No hi res stuff there.

A dome will act a little differently to what you are accustomed to Doug. Cool down time will differ a bit too. Happy imaging.

[Hagar]

Hi Paul, surprisingly, the nice shinny white finish does keeo the internal temprature down quite a bit below ambient and once the sun drops, opening theappeture and the door does drop the internal temp quite quickly. It will be interesting to see how it goes with a scope fitted up but I should be able to monitor it with the temp monitor on robofocus.

The big plus for me is it fits in my tiny backyard without taking all the space a ROR would take.

[desler]

I'm so jealous on a number of counts, 1. you beat me to it, 2. I wasn't there to fit it out with you and enjoy a few cold ones at the endof construction, sitting on the deck and enjoying the view.

But alas, I'm very happy for you. I hope it serves you well!

Darren

[Cloudyagain]

That looks excellent Doug. Great buy. You will get a lot of enjoyment out of it and the never ending rotation of gear you can put in it. Handy to the house for easy wireless access too.

Don't suppose you'd want to pop it back on the trailer and bring it to Snake Valley so the rest of us could have a good look? ....didn't think so :lol:

Cheers,
Neale.

[Hagar]

That is some ask. It nearly killed me getting it this far in the heat. Still a lot of work to be done to finish it off and get it fully operational.

[Ric]

Congrats Doug

It's a fine looking setup that you'll have on completion, looking forward to more pictures.

Cheers

[h0ughy]

LOL when i was building mine we had a heatwave for a week where the temps were over 37 - i put up some shade over where i built the deck or else it would have been nighttime construction ;)

[Hagar]

I can understand that David, 30+ here everyday of building and now we are looking at very high 30's into the 40's so no more will be happeneing until it cools down a bit. SWMBO wanted it off the front lawn so the best thing was to get the building up. The rest can now wait for a cool change. I still have to order the dome rotation gear. How long was the wait on that?

[mozzie]

well done doug:thumbsup: looks great better then the old tin shed....don't forget to put a few power points in the more the better... if you want a few ideas for your raised floor i can tell you how i raised mine and what products i used..

[Hagar]

Hi Pete, I doubt I will need a raised floor. Maybe just a sheet of ply wood to lift the floor up 15mm or so. Then some carpet to make it cosy on those long cold winter nights. I will be running power etc under the decking.

Cheers Mate see you in August. Say hi to your family, including Astro.

[spearo]

nice!
frank

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Doug,

MAN, you have got to be happy with that!!

Blindingly white in one of the photos, certainly is picturesque up at Mount Beauty!

Perhaps you should call the obs "WhiteStar" ???

I feel a naming comp coming on........

Excellent work

Cheers

Chris

[ChrisM]

Hi Doug,
Just caught up with your news on this latest project, which is looking very neat in your backyard. I'll look out for it next time I'm on West Peak! Keep us posted with more pics once you're set up in the dome.

BTW, for the benefit of others, I can verify your claim regarding living amongst the mountains, and have posted a pic to prove it. (Mount Beauty township as seen from West Peak of Mt Bogong)

Cheers,
Chris

[Hagar]

Hi Chris, It certainly is nestled into the mountains. You should drop in next time you are up this way. The old days of all the old SEC operations staff getting around to see each other is long gone so my chances of getting down to the Valley to catch up is pretty slim these days.
I'm off to Snake Valley AC in a couple of weeks and of course BSG in August. You should come up.

Ah the west peak of Bogong. Been a few years since I ventured up there on the long walk up and the even harder walk down. Too old and fat now. They would need the MICA air ambulance on standby if I tackled it these days.

Good to hear from you.

[Hagar]

The dome rotation kit has been ordered and should be delivered this week.
The work will start all over again.

It will be nice when it's finished.

[marc4darkskies]

A bit late to the party but congrats on the new dome Doug! What a find! Looking good too (as all domes do :)).

Cheers, Marcus

PS: When will you be taking orders for adaptors??! ;)

[Hagar]

This would have to have been the biggest and toughest project I have started to date. The observatory itself and the dome rotation hardware were really a breeze to assemble. If I can do it without a major stuff up and without bits left over it must be easy.

The big killer for me has been getting the dome to slave with the telescope while connected to Starry Night Pro or the Sky six. I must have tried every combination of software and ascom drivers there is and still had some unreliable success but also a lot of total failures.
I tried everything known to man appart from purchasing a copy of Automadome from software Bisque. I wasn't going down that track as Houghy had made the purchase and was no closer to getting it all to work than I was.

I have scoured the internet for any snippet of info which might shed some light on my problems. I just couldn't get the dome to connect with the Gemini and the planetarium program without one two or all three throwing there arms and legs in the air in horror and sprouting some new and unheard of error message.

I had almost settled on using POTH (Plain old telescope handset) to interface between the 3 components I wanted to connect. Seemed like a good cost neutral alternative to Automadome. POTH being an intermeadiary connection program I was eventually able to connect all together as long as I started POTH, made the connection to the dome and Gemini and once these were connected made a final connection from The Sky to POTH using The Ascom Tele API.

I though I had struck it rich until the next time I tried to repeat the win only to find the gemini wouldn't connect and brought up a batch of new errors which really frightened me as one was almost a full page of quite small text. Out of interest I tried the same connection routine with the ascom telescope and dome simulator and it all worked every time. I now suspected a Gemini problem.

Back to the net I went, joined the Gemini_Ascom.net Yahoo group and started sifting through another bucket full of information. One item which kept popping up was a comment that the Gemini Ascom controller didn't work effectively when started from a third party controller like POTH, Ascom Dome or even Automadome. The fix seemed to be to open the Gemini Ascom control from the desktop and make the connection first then to start POTH and while connected request Poth to start the Gemini driver and it seemed to connect seamlessly every time.
This was a big win for me and it just required some settings on the dome and mount geometry to be input into POTH dome control to get it working.

This was not as easy as it first seemed. The geometry figures required were not terribly well explained and my original figures were less than satisfactory. Thankfully Marcus Davies has been through this same process and has produced a document explaining the geometry requirements. His document explained how and where to take the measurements from and made this final stage much easier. THANK MARCUS.

I now have a dome which does follow my scope quite reliably. A few of the figures need some fine tuning but at least it now all works and leaves me with a small amount of hair to keep the sun off the side of my head.
It has been quite a process and had I known it was going to be so hard I probably would have stayed with my old ROR although the dome should be more pleasurable in winter and on windy evenings.

I guess this closes another chapter in my learning curve in astrophotography. I can't say this one has been fun though.

Thanks to everyone who has helped and provided support during this and to my Wife a big thanks for not moving my bed into my little round room.

[mill]

You can always call it the Doughouse :P

[Hagar]

Good one Marty, good one.

[Tandum]

Jezz what a horror story Doug. Glad you've sussed it out. I only installed the lesve dome driver on mine yesterday and it's all up and running straight out of the sky, working fine and tracking like a bought one tonight. It seems I have to click a button in POTH to connect to the dome once it's up but at least it's all going. Now at least you can put it behind you and move on :)

[h0ughy]

Isnt there some copyright laws or something to stop this ;)



thats what i found as well - but somehow it nover works the same way twice:shrug:

i gave up for a while, but then tried the basic dome control with ascom and got it to working where the scope and dome worked well - two nights in a row. i am yet to get the rotten thing to talk to theSky6 properly and as for automadome - what a waste of money - should never have jumped in so quick purchasing that. i sure in some alternate universe it must be working for someone (not including Marcus ;) )