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My obs Eureka moment


lukebl

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Hi all,

Some of you might recall my project of a couple of years ago when I converted my kids' unused playhouse into an observatory (see the thread here). It's served its purpose brilliantly, but I had a bit of a Eureka moment the other day, which led to me making a significant change to it today which will enhance my use of it. Here it is in action before the changes:

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When I made the original conversion, the location of the pier was based on the naïve assumption that the telescope would and should always be parked in the 'traditional' vertical position. The drawback of having the pier in this position was that there was very little room in the obs for me, and much of the sky from east through to north and west was obscured by the roof, although I have a good east-south-west view. However, I found that I always parked it in a horizontal position because the guidescope got in the way of the roof anyway. The Eureka moment was realising that if I shifted the obs a couple of feet to the north, leaving the pier in position, I would gain a much greater area of sky, and also much more space in the obs for me. Took me two years to realise it.

So I attacked it today, and here's a slightly mad animation of the result, and a pic of it in my usual parked position. Even I had the sense to move the telescope out of the way before shifting the obs!

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That short change in position means that the only bit of sky now obscured is a cone from NW-N-NE, which is no great loss, and the circumpolar region is now visible to the scope for the first time. Until now I could only image objects for around 3 hours either side of the meridian, but now I can extend that for a few hours. Think I'll take a pic of the previously-obscured Polaris to celebrate!

Now it needs a lick of paint.

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Neat little obsy that is :) Simple and clever design. A gert big scope in a teeny obsy :) Mine's t'other way round ATM - provision for a bigger scope later :icon_scratch:

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Is there a reason why you do not make the other half of the roof detachable as well? Seems less complicated to me

One of the drawbacks of converting an existing structure cheaply, I guess. The pitched roof was important to the structural integrity of the thing. Removing the long stretch of roof was just about OK, but removing the other bit too would have made the walls all floppy and lose the simplicity of a simple roll-up roof. Anyway, it works reasonably well.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Does seem a shame to be 'losing' sky in any obsy but most of us are limited in some way from our favoured observation points. My garden prevents me viewing a large area of sky from the South-West to NNW and a sodium lamp shining directly into the garden from the SE is real nuisance too.

Great idea to move the Obsy, sometimes its ahrd to see the woods for the trees, obvious maybe in hindsight but if you had been ducking the scope for 2 years it probably became just part of general use!

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  • 4 weeks later...

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