With the new roof height of 200cm it had become hard to open/close the roof: the roof itself was within reach of my hands, but actually moving the roof was tough. The job done, only some minor tasks to be done, such as a new full height door. Matthias and Rob are looking with well deserved pride: we DID it! You can see that on the sides of the parking place we screwed planks so that the roof would not derail. No, there are no photos of the actual roof lifting: even I had to work then.
It was a bit scary - and also this was the part that worried me most - but we managed to get the roof on its new lofty parking place. The parking place for the roof is ready: time to do some roof lifting! It looks like Matthias and Rob do not want to become known as observatory builders. I made sure that now and then also some photos were taken. I started off by making heavy wooden frames: I bought the impregnated wood from a garden centre.Īfter having completed the wooden frames I put them close to their destinations.Īstro-friends and QCUIAG-members Matthias Meijer and Rob Kantelberg came over to help with the construction: without their help it would have taken me far more than one week to do all the work on my own.Īnd now all was completed in one day: thank you guys !!!!įirst we built the new parking place for the roof: Matthias is wielding an electric screw-driver and Rob is assisting. I also replaced some old planks with new ones, so not all new wood implies that it was used for height extension.Įffective height is now 200 centimetres, which is more than enough for my LX200 10-inch f/10 when mounted on my wedge and a one metre high pier, even with a guide scope mounted on top. Here is the result: 63 centimetres make a lot of difference! The following pictures show how the roof was raised. I first lowered the tripod by digging it in and that worked, but my back started complaining as I had to bend uncomfortably low to be able to peer through the finder, and looking through the eyepiece (without diagonal as I am an imager) was even worse.Īlso the Alt/Az mount was hampering my posibilities to do deep-sky imaging.Ī very good friend of mine offered to make a wedge (from 15mm thick steel !!) and pier for me and I decided to raise the roof of my observatory so that I could observe and image comfortably. In November 2005 my LX200 telescope arrived, and as it stands taller than my TAL-2M I had to come up with a solution so that it would still be possible to open/close the roof. Here are some pictures of the first version of my observatory (Spring 2001) Most of the pictures on this page can also be viewed as an No, I do not get wet when it rains: I am not in the observatory then: no stars to be seen! Of course there is NO HEATING INSIDE: the turbulence created by the heating would utterly destroy my images! But as you can see on one of the images: I took my precautions against the wintery conditions! The roof is supported by 8 wheels opening/closing is done by a set of ropes and tackles.
The observatory is made out of wood, which I bought in the local garden shop the floor is paved with wooden tiles against cold feet in winter! The size is 2,40 x 2,40 meters - which was more or less determined by the size of the available impregnated planks of 4,80 meters. I investigated this animation and found the name of the author: Phillip Shrock.īecause of the weight of my TAL-2M (my FIRST !!!) telescope and the delicateness of the fine tuning of the mirrors I decided to build a backyard observatory. Please allow time for the animation to load. Here you can find out your own Latitude and Longitude THE FIRMAMENT: Observatory, roll-off roof, pier, wedge
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