Archive for November, 2001

Building Your Own Observatory Part 4

Saturday, November 24th, 2001 at 9:11 pm  
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All the coach screws were removed and the three wall frames taken down. I lifted the floor and re-cut it so that it would fit within the inner boundaries if the wall frames rather than being flush with their outer edges. Lifting the floor was more difficult than anticipated as …

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Building Your Own Observatory Part 3

Saturday, November 17th, 2001 at 7:04 pm  
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Having installed the pier and leveled the top plate (as described in the previous article), I made sure that everything was rock solid and that I could easily polar align the telescope before beginning construction of the observatory itself.

First Ideas For An Observatory

At the time I was considering …

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Building Your Own Observatory Part 2

Saturday, November 10th, 2001 at 10:19 pm  
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Not According to Plan

This is where I first went wrong. The widest tube I could find was 90mm aluminium piping. I sank this into concrete that was 60cm deep (I couldn’t dig any deeper – the soil was thick compressed clay). The hole I dug was 60cm square. The …

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Building Your Own Observatory Part 1

Saturday, November 3rd, 2001 at 2:21 pm  
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If you own a telescope, you’re familiar with how long it takes to set up your scope for an observing session. How many times, though, have you found that just as everything is ready, the clouds roll in? Or worse, it starts to rain and you make a mad …

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