New Observatory Shed

Great - thanks Kieran. I've sent him a mail.

Any pitfalls that touy came across that would be handy to know in advance? Or is there anything you would have done differently or incorporated in the design stage?

Cheers

Dave

Very impressive Kieran, !
I hope it you get many clear nights with it.

Dave,

The shed at this stage is a prototype for Riverside so there are some modifications that can be made. William is a really sound guy and has got very involved with this project. He started to install the shed last weekend and it managed to survive the storm force winds (a tree beside the house did not) without any anchors in so it is fairly solid. One thing I have said to him is that on the external runners to drill some holes so that any rain water can drain away before entering the shed. I have also ordered moisture absorbant snakes and granules which should control the humidity. The base should be as level as possible. The pier I put in is slightly too low because I did not take into account that the shed would be leveled on concrete blocks. This would have been avoided if I had put in a level concrete base. If you need one bigger or smaller I have all the design specs for various sizes and I can pass these on to William.
The observatory will now be christened An Carraig.

Kieran

PS I intend to put in a plywood clad small area with a heater ie warm room. If you relocate the entrance door to the gable wall below the roll off end then you can extend the shed to make a bigger warm room.

Hi Kieran,
Do you have any pics of the pillar, there are ways of avoiding to have the actual piller level and still level the scope. What I did an number of years ago was have a plate welded to the top of the pillar and then level another plate above it using the thread bars, see pic.

static.flickr.com/139/318368497_687f406065_o.jpg

I figured I would not be able to level the pillar foundation enough to be usable, the plates are 16x16 inches by 1 inch thick, the threadbars are 3/4 inch thick, you dont get a sence of scale in the pic, I kept the threadbars as short as possible so there is abolsutely no wobble and it is very solid. the lower plate comes in handy for holding eyepieces/usb hubs and anything else you can think of, you could (as in your case) increase the height of the scope further using these method, although I wouldn't go too far with it. You can see the bottom half of the super wedge that holds the 12"lx200 in polar alignment, so there is alot of weight sitting on this thing.

The pier is an aluminium tube filled with concrete and three threaded rods at the top to hold the wedge. Its leveled using locking nuts below the wedge. I still need to attach something to allow the wedge to be moved east or west with its threaded bar. I am just nudging it by hand at the moment.

I am not overly worried about the height since I will be piggy backing the 80mm apo on the 10" which will add about another six inches to the height and should just leave enough clearance when the roof rolls off.
If I do need the extra height I will get some plates made up that can be bolted to the threaded rods.

I went out last night and did a rough polar alignment but I still need to drift align the scope. I was getting about 4 minute exposures using a 135mm lens and an SXVM7C without any star trails. When the H16 comes back it will not be as tolerant with the current alignment.

Kieran

Sounds like you have it under control Kieran, although you might find that nudging it will make it harder to get alignment, time will tell.