Finished!! (For now...)
Hi all,
I have finally finished the dome. I had to wend my way through a wedding (mine), honeymoon (mine also), weather (God's) and work (they're the bankrollers).
I have used foam sheeting to cover the gap between the dome and the base. Rather than have an "Overhang" style of covering I have chosen to do the opposite, namely to run foam from the base to the INSIDE of the rotating dome such that the water and wind and dust are deflected downwards to the base of the structure. It works very well indeed. The dome rotates on 8 hard rollers from the boating store - they are used on trailers, and after some teething and running in issues, I can, most of the time, rotate the quarter tonne dome easily and almost silently- WD40 is wonderful stuff!
The scope is aligned well and can slew from park (about 10 deg above the northern horizon) to, Rigel Kentaurus with an accuracy of about 10 minutes of arc plus or minus. It is more accurate abviously for shorter slews.
I will be fitting an SBIG STL-11000M-C2 Self-Guiding camera soon and will be getting stuck into some long exposures.
Richard
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