My little pied a ciel

[jenchris]

Decided I needed to put up an observatory or I'd never make use of the short hours we've had this last year - if it's all set up, I can just go and turn it on - easy.
So 2 weeks ago I set a pier - it's a high pressure water main 200 ID which I filled with concrete and rio (I put a 100mm pipe in the centre to save me some concrete but that won't upset anyone strength wise.
Last week after I'd toiled leveling the pad it started raining so I made use of the easier digging!
I set the concrete edges and covered them - then put up the shed later in the week.
Now it has the slides and wedge on and I'm lining it out.
The floor is drying out and once it is dry, I'll install a wooden floor.
Here's the pics

[multiweb]

Nicely done. Looks like you had a fair bit of slope to deal with. Not a trivial exercise with the roll off roof I suspect.

[jenchris]

cut was about 300 and fill was the same (so I didn't have to supply or dump material!).
My lack of muscle meant I minimised the pad too - and my poverty stopped me using a full concrete pad!

[leon]

That's pretty cool, nice job.

Leon

[multiweb]

I ear in clay soil you can reuse clay blocks and mix them with the concrete to minimize the number of concrete bags you'd use. Even stones, broken bricks whatever fill I suppose. It's just a slab for a nice finish. Not structural.

[jenchris]

Yeah I put in an ag drain too. there's a steep hill above that which is a good collector!
Once the ground dries from this unusual spell of wet, it'll not get wet again

[ChrisM]

Good quick job there! You should find the difference to your observing possibilities amazing.

Chris

[jjjnettie]

Fanbloodytastic Jen. :) Your talent exceeds most of us here on the forum. My hat's off to you.

[spacezebra]

Excellent Jen, looking forward to your progress.

Cheers Petra d.

[Jen]

:thumbsup: nice one Jen looking good :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[jenchris]

So now the scope is mounted, I can check the angles.
Less than 10 degrees East andWest for full clearance of shed lip
And the roof closes without a problem. Sorted!
Put in an ag drain to stop waterfall syndrome...

[jjjnettie]

Looks like you need to borrow a chain saw too. LOL

[jenchris]

I don't need to borrow a chain saw, I have one!
I shall be using it judiciously on one or two little shrubs.....:D

[jenchris]

Successfully negotiated fist light on Saturday Night.
Drift align went reasonably well - need to sort out some more batteries for more time - my baby laptop is really weak battery wise and I haven't successfully used the ascom on Win7 laptop - which I use for the imaging (I have 2 laptops going at once!)

[jjjnettie]

:D you've had 282 views on this thread so far.
Very popular indeed.

[ZeroID]

Nice work Jennifer, very inspiring. I'm looking at a similar idea.

I can't see any rollers on your roof panels. Do they just slide on the edges of the shed and the wooden supports ?
Do you anticipate any leakage\seepage problems around the roof edges ?
Are you going to add seal strips or similar to keep out the elements and the creepy crawlies ?

Just that I'm concerned with moisture and electronics getting mixed. Corrosion even on a minor scale is bad news and hard to find and remedy.

[jenchris]

I'm monitoring the damp - and being a tin shed, it dries out and reduces the humidity very quickly once daylight is on it.
I cover the scope inside to stop it getting too warm.
The inside is lined on East and West with styrofoam.
The roof slides on the reinforced gable - it has no more gaps than the original design except maybe the end of the capping.
The roof comes together into a socketed hip so rain can't get around the baffle effect.
Here's a schematic of the hip I drew up, showing the construction
I have drilled through the reinforcing lintel on the side and threaded some rope through to the edge of the roof panel which when I pull on it draws the panel back up the gables, then I just clip the loose side of the hip to the side screwed onto the other panel .
Takes about a minute. The loose ropes are then tied off to secure the roof edge from lifting in wind

[Ric]

Fantastic job Jennifer

That is one great looking Observatory.

[jenchris]

Thanks Ric

[alistairsam]

Hi Jen,

Very nice work. few questions.
How do you maintain a water tight seal in the middle when the roof is closed? do you have overlapping flaps on top?
what is that rusted bracket behind your wedge?
for the pier, are those M10 or M12 bolts? I'd suggest thicker bolts if at all possible and you could reduce the clearance of the levelling plate to reduce flexure at the bolts.
how are the sides of the shed anchored?
have you noticed a difference from using the wedge on a tripod?
well done though.
Alistair

[jenchris]

The pic in the above post shows the panel overlap and ridge cap arrangement - doesn't leak - I have made up scissor clips to hold the two edges together when closed. I'll photo them later for y'all.
They are stainless M12 bolts (on the wedge)- and only quite short - they don't appear to flex much - the plates are 15mm steel.
Never used the wedge on a tripod - it used to vibrate a bit on the 100x100 steel post I had it on before but doesn't appear to now.
The rusted bracket behind the wedge is an old hacksaw I picked up and hung there and forgot to move !! lol

Since it is a Meade alt az mount, I would never expect to get more than about 5 mins per exposure without slop - simply because the machining of the gears is so pathetic. I've seen better gears on an Indian lawnmower. A Trabant would be classed as high end engineering in comparison. A little flex at the mounting plate is not going to be noticed.... even if it was significant - which it isn't.
If you do the engineering maths, with an off centre mass moving at 15 arcsec per second constant, the torsion would be less than 1gmcm/mm^2 on the bolts (divided by three for the three bolts) -
The affect of the OTA on the forks with droop and hz would be so much greater that it diminishes into insignificance.. The bolts stay. Besides I already shortened them by 50%.

[mozzie]

well done !!!!!!!!!you won't know your self having a permanent setup....the ease of just closing the roof when the weather comes in.....

[jenchris]

At last... I got a few hours in last night.
The humidity was a little high, but the sky was clear - so I went out to grab some photons and see if my guiding and setup could get decent stars on my new pier.
I did a run of 6 x 3 minute and 3 x 6 minute runs - flawlessly.
I was hoping I'd got cone nebula, but it is actually the wrong star I took so cone never appeared when I processed, but the stars remained round!