CptTrips, that is amazing! I love those pictures too. Very nice!
Is that building the same one where the telescope is at? How does the roof open up?
Really cool.
Thanks.
Yep. That is a roll-offf roof observatory design. The building is divided in half with an interior wall/door.. The right have is a cabin where I can sleep after an all-nighter on the scope. The left half is the observatory.
The scope is mounted on a concrete pier that doesn't actually touch the building. A hole in the floor lefts the pier in with a 2 inch gap around the floor. That way I can be doing long exposures and walk around in the cabin and not vibrate the scope and ruin an image from vibration. The pier goes down 3 ft in the ground to the bedrock limestone of the hill and is tied into it with drilled and epoxied j-bolts. It's basically a part of the hill.
The roof is built to be supported on v-groove steel wheels and I welded up some angle iron rails. I can roll the whole roof on and off with one hand. It's locked down when I'm not observing.
Roof in closed position...
Me learning to weld. Kinda sloppy. I think I had the wire speed too fast. But it was functional. These are the rails that allow the roof to roll out over the patio area.
Here is the best Jupiter I've done. My goal is to try and beat that this year. And do some better solar.
I tend to enjoy solar\lunar\planetary stuff the most. In all those things change. You see new cloud patterns or changed in band colors over time in Jupiter. Watch it's moons transit and watch the moons shadow move across Jupiters face over the course of a couple of hours. Even the Moon features can be strikingly different beteen nights and the shadow angles change with the phase. Some structure only appear at certain times of the Lunar day when angles are just right for the shadows.
A nebular or galaxy is going to be pretty much exactly the same 5, 10, 40, 80 years from now. No real change. The only reason to go back to photograph those is to test your new levels of skill or equipment and compare to your previous best to see if you have improved.
The scope has been down a couple of years. The dive gears were hosed. I finally worked up the courage to take it all apart and fix it. It's all go to go now. I hope to get back to photographing this year.
