We were thinking of having a sun-room built at the back of our house and I was wondering if an opening roof system like the one below would allow me to use it as an observatory as well?
that is pretty cool! any observatory is better than no observatory, the only issues i can see with this is that it might not give you a great field of view and it might take a little while for the "observatory" to cool down to ambient temp.
If you have tin or concrete roof in the house, there could be an issue of heat radiating from the roof during the night while observing or imaging. This could affect the quality of viewing.
Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking the same about the field of view I would get as the walls of the sun room will be fairly high so unless the scope can be raised up high, the views of the surrounding sky might be a little limited.
My house is two storeys so I'm already a little restricted on my views of the eastern sky with the house in the way so heat coming off the roof probably won't be too much of an issue.
According to the PDF documents on the Concertina Louvres, it is fully watertight when closed.
Still weighing up the pros and cons of this idea as I'm sure its going to be pretty expensive and it may not end up being an ideal use of the space in the sun-room. May be better off getting a conventional roof for the sun-room and keep the savings for a dedicated sliding roof style observatory further down the backyard at a later date.
