Graeme

I was enjoying the images in the World Nature Photography awards but a fellow photographer pointed out that in the last image there's a view of both the Milky Way and the Aurora Borealis in the same shot, taken from Grand Teton Peak Wyoming, US. It's an excellent image but to see what looks like the central section of the Milky Way one would have to be looking South from Wyoming and to see the Aurora Borealis one would need to be looking North. Is this image possible? https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2023/mar/06/from-furry-families-to-fungi-the-world-nature-photography-awards-in-pictures

Wet concrete calls out for having initials and construction dates scribed into it! I'll have to sort out an @powerlord style plaque for the door later!

I thought the same thing about automating the roof, I'll only be 20 feet away and since the roof will be locked when shut I will need to be out there for all opening and closing anyway. I'll probably have a rain sensor that can alert NINA's Safety Monitor to send a message to my phone if it rains and I've nodded off on the settee! Good luck with the end of March target. Regards Graeme

Their podcast is good too! Graeme

Well there was a bit more concreting to do to hold the base section to prevent lateral movement and uplift. There's now a bag of ballast at two opposite corners. Now I need to take up the base section to lay the damp course before I start on building the timber frame. The 4"x4" corner uprights and the 4"x2" for the top section have been stained and are ready to go.

That's what I am going to do. Two fans at high level, controlled by a temperature sensor, relay and Arduino as stage 1 over temperature control and two fans at low level for stage 2 over temperature control.

Great to see the results of your hard work! Your M101 is a wall hanger!

Good advice. Would you insulate the walls or put a membrane behind the OSB? I've watched videos of people using one or the other or both or neither!

Phase one civil works is now finished. (After I've had a bit of a clean up!) Next stage is the wood work which I'm hoping to get on with this week end.

That turned out really well Arnaud. And for a good price too! I hope you get many years of use out of it. I would say go for the EAF. Regards Graeme

And here it is with the shuttering struck. Looks like we didn't use the poker on the rear section! But the cube and pier are as solid as a rock. Going to start laying bricks tomorrow. I'll pug up the holes in the concrete with the mortar! This is definitely the most accurate spirit level I have ever used! I need to get an M6 tap to fix the bolts that came with the Baader adapter to the brake disc.

Mine is the PPA so I will need to look at using the variable 12V for the flat panel controlled from NINA's advanced sequencer. Cheers for that. The USB doesn't need to connect to the pc in the house when using Teamviewer. Everything is connected to and controlled by the remote pc. Thanks again for resurrecting this thread Chubster, I hope you're finding it as helpful as I am!

Glad you did, it's applicable to my situation. I asked on the Pegasus forum if my Pocket Pegasus could control the 12V outputs separately but my question remains unanswered. I would like to turn my flat frame light box on at the end of the session. I should have asked here! This thread tells me only the Ultimate can do that. In answer to your question, I do as Scotty38 advised, My mount and cameras are connected to a pc in the garage via a Pegasus Pocket Box and I remote to that from my indoors pc, in the warm, using Teamviewer over the internet. I use NINA, CPWI, PHD2 and the Pegasus software all running in the garage and controlled from my front room with no problems. Regards Graeme

That's a fine looking pier Arnaud. And a very nice disc, it looks like the one I have! Good luck with the first light. Are you going to build a roll off roof shed around it?

Those Telegizmos look like the solution. The pain of having to carry my SCT from the garage to the patio and set up every time was the inspiration for my roll off roof build. And at the end of last year I finished radiotherapy for stage 3 prostate cancer. So I'm with you on the feeling tired thing! I hope you're feeling good enough to get some quality astro viewing and astrophotography in. Regards Graeme

Do you have a couple of handy grand kids to help you pull in some £6.18 SWA and ask the Electrician to just gland and terminate it?

Looking good Arnauld. The gravel was a good idea. Regards Graeme

I was a member at Greenwich for a few years and I did their two year foundation Astronomy course too. So much history there, it is a brilliant place.

Can I offer: 1. The 28" refractor at Greenwich. Home of the Greenwich meridian. I've looked through it four times! 2. The 72" Leviathan at Burr castle in County Offaly, Ireland. The biggest telescope in the world at the time. It resolved the spiral nature of M51. I went for a visit for my 60th. 3. LIGO. A whole new paradigm of observing.

I'm not familiar with the Ioptron mount. I use NINA with my CGX mount. I connect the mount to the Celestron CPWI planetarium software first to load the ASCOM drivers. Then I fire up NINA and connect everything. How do you load the ASCOM drivers? What happens if you select a different star from Polaris for your manual focus target? Does the mount slew ok? Once you have imported the Stellarium co-ordinates, what happens if you select slew from the drop down instead of using slew and centre? Slew and centre will do a plate solve. Which plate solve software are you using? Regards Graeme

The concrete pour went well today. We filled the base cube and vibrated out all the air bubbles. Base cube filled, pier pipe filled and brake disc studs inserted. There wasn't time to wait for midday to line up the shadow of the studs with due north! But we lined up a string line to the marker I put in a couple of weeks ago. Job done! We filled in the trench along the fence line which will be the support for the back of the observatory. Apparently I have to wait a week for the concrete to cure before I can put the mount on top of the pier. The jet wash came out to clean up the patio block work. I'll be putting the Baader mount adapter on the brake disc, putting that on the studs and levelling up this weekend. Then I can finish the pipework back to the garage and start thinking about the observatory build! Massive thanks to my good friend Tony for some excellent concreting work today.

No, but it's one more thing to aid image quality. You could shutter around the top 6" of concrete and take it out after curing. Or you could build a raised timber frame.

Looks like a good start. Are you going to isolate your underground block from the surrounding slabs? Regards Graeme

Shuttering is all finished, pipework is nearly there, I need one more 135° to kick the internet/camera/alarm pipe back to the shuttering. The pier support is looking a bit Heath Robinson! But the spirit level is happy with it. The blue tape is holding the pipe for the 12V and USB to the mount. As well as the 10mm rebar there's a 1m length of M25 threaded rod from the bottom of the block to the top of the pier. I'll make up a wood former for the 3 x M16 studs when the concrete gets poured. My good friend Tony is coming Wednesday with his concrete mixer and vibrating poker.

I followed your build Martin and will be using a lot of your ideas! I'll be using 3 x 16 stud in the concrete pier with just the one brake disk on top. (Here) So my spare brake disc (they come in pairs) is still available to a good home of a diy observatory builder for a fiver, if you think you might need it Arnaud.