New Observatory - MkII

Over 3 years ago in this thread www.irishastronomy.org/forum?func=view&id=13576&catid=22 I discussed the construction of my observatory. This observatory served me very well. It was built with an 8" LX90 in mind. However, a few scopes later, I have a 16" SCT and no longer have sufficient room to use the scope in comfort. Therefore, I have decided to wave goodbye to it and have invested in one of these:

www.pulsar-observatories.com
It's a 2.7m (9ft) fibreglass dome. With thanks to Darren Dempsey for his help, we picked it up in the UK last weekend. I am now in the process of dismantling my shed and observatory to make room for this new purchase.
I will update this thread as I carry out the new work.
Michael.

In terms of my old observatory, it was a garden shed which had the roof re-built. The quality of the timber used on the walls & floor was pretty poor and would be difficult to dismantle & resuse. However, the roof is in excellent shape. If you have an 8ft x 6ft shed and would like to convert it into an observatory, you can save yourself a few quid & a load of work and take the roof of my old observatory for free.
If you are interested in taking up this offer, pm me asap. If I hear nothing in the next couple of days, it will be heading for the skip on Friday. If you want it, you will need a decent-sized car trailer, a couple of people to help carry it from the back garden to the car trailer and you will need to collect it next weeekend.
Regards,
Michael.

Good stuff on getting the new observatory!
Are you going to have the PC in there or use a seperate room for that ?
I have a good 1 stone sledge hammer if you need it for your demolition :silly:

Dave_Lillis wrote:

Good stuff on getting the new observatory!
Are you going to have the PC in there or use a seperate room for that ?
I have a good 1 stone sledge hammer if you need it for your demolition :silly:

If the PC is in the observatory, the monitor might take up a decent amount of space, so I am debating about getting a cheap flat-screen monitor which I can fix on to the observatory wall. I was then thinking that I could have the keyboard on a fold-down table. The main box of the PC itself shouldn't take up too much space. When the PC is not in use, I could fold the keyboard away.
Alternatively, I could have the PC unit in the observatory with the monitor, keyboard and mouse in a small warm room directly adjacent to the observatory. This would free up space in the observatory and reduce warm currents in the observatory from the monitor.
Anyway, I'll get the dome up and running first and will see then what do do about the PC.

Michael.

Mike that really does look the biz!

When is the grand opening!

Michael, I hope all goes well with the new observatory, it looks the business

Keith..