Ammon Observatory Progress

[rscott78]

Hey everyone - 

I'm a new (ish) astronomer. My interests lie in astrophotography and I've found my biggest obstruction to my motivation is having to setup, align and tear down my scope each evening. As such, I've talked myself (and my wife!) into letting me build my own observatory. 

We are located in Southeast Idaho east of the small city of Ammon. I'm in the foothills where we've got a backdrop of windmills and as such, we tend to get very high and gusty winds. I originally planned on doing a slide off roof, but with the wind I decided to go with a dome for a little more shelter.

I've decided to go with a 20'x10' building, with the dome being an 8' Explora-dome (probably?) located on a 10'x10' section of the building and the remainder of the building being a warm room.

Our ground is super-rocky; the first excavator we hired couldn't get lower than about 17" inches into the ground, so we had to hire someone with a much larger rig; he was able to get down to the required 30" for the footer. Here's an image with our footer: 30" deep - it's a lotta concrete!

[rscott78]

Here's our pad after we had someone come in with gravel to bring it to grade.

[rscott78]

For the pillar, I picked a 16" sonotube. It's resting on top of the footing we build earlier and stands 68" above the floor. I plan to use a welded metal cylinder to bring it up to my needed height and provide the bolts for attaching my mount to the top. 

[rscott78]

We used a 2nd larger sonotube around the first to provide a gap between the concrete floor and the pillar itself and to isolate it from vibrations and movement in the floor.

[rscott78]

This is the board with the bolts that we placed in the top of the sonotube. 

[rscott78]

And here we are after pouring fresh concrete. The weather turned cold, so we covered it up with a few layers of concrete blankets to keep it from freezing. 

[catman161]

Looks to be a great build. Keen to see it progress.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[des anderson]

Terrific horizons.Build looks awesome.....Des

[David Smith]

Wish my house was that big

Looks amazing

[laudropb]

Coming along nicely. Looks like a wonderful site to observe from.

[Vox45]

Can't wait to see the progress looking good!

[rscott78]

We are about to start on the walls... what are everyone's thoughts for wall height? 7' or 8'?

Ryan

[mwayne]

Without knowing what kind of scope your going to be using etc. I would say a 7 ft. wall would be better than the 8 ft. If you have 8 ft walls and a refractor or Schmidt Cassegrainian and looking at something close to the horizon then your eyepiece is going to be about 8 ft off the floor and a ladder will be needed.

[michael8554]

It's unusual to cast the tube on top of a footer that has cured, the bond between them will be poor and may separate under load, resulting in a wobbly pier.

Michael

[rscott78]

It's unusual to cast the tube on top of a footer that has cured, the bond between them will be poor and may separate under load, resulting in a wobbly pier.

Michael

Definitely not what I want to hear at this point in time! I hired a concrete guy to do all that... you'd think he'd know his own profession. Don't suppose there's anything that can be done to beef up the strength at this point? Do the rebar not help?

[rscott78]

Walls are up! Here's the inside - this is from the office looking at the dome room. I'll be adding a raised platform - probably 4.5 feet off the floor to get the user to a comfortable height to view through. On the left is the entrance. The stairs will run parallel with the center wall towards the right wall - we went this way since the stairs would be on the north side and hopefully in a lower traffic area (the camera is facing due south in this picture).

Right behind the ladder is a window that will let me look into the obs room from my control room. 

[rscott78]

Walls up - picture from outside the observatory. This is looking east.