Rusted

Struggling here. Pick a colour.. any colour..

Thanks Dave. Zinc is likely to get hot in sunshine as well as being more expensive. Polished aluminium is relatively cool. Reflects the sky and surroundings so is less visible than white paint. Not sure what acrylic roof coating is compared to liquid rubber. I'll do some homework. Thanks again.

Interesting! II just need to source something like it over here. Amazon won't deliver. I thought it would only be available in black but they also list a white! Thanks.

I'd worry about the dome taking off in a gale unless more serious ground anchoring is also applied. Like expansion bolts into concrete or "epoxy" chemical fixing of long, galvanized bolts. For my 2 storey, octagonal, observatory building I used tapered, buried concrete "carport" anchors/foundation blocks. Once they were firmly backfilled with self compacting sand/gravel, the blocks would have to be lifted out of the ground. Rather than "just" lying on top of it. No detectable movement yet despite some pretty severe gales.

Many thanks again for the continuing input. Black roofing felt is simply too heavy and too absorbent of hot sunshine. I have lately become a solar imager by obsession. The dome is leaky at the seams despite spending literally hundreds of pounds on "the highest quality, marine, flexible and long lasting" sealant in cartridges. Which means that not only does everything flex and move but is is damp both inside and out in heavy rain. The "high quality" sealant has cracked in lots of places. Fibreglass is the most obvious route to happiness but has several major downsides: Smelly, messy and very time consuming working at such a height. It also spoils the crispness of once, sharp corners when externally applied. Being trapezoidal the plywood panels could be replaced with thin aluminium in full "gore" drops. No distortion trying to make 2D into 3D curves. It could be overlapped sideways and pop riveted. Still haven't found a Danish stockist who sells the suitable lengths to private customers. I thought of tarpaulin drops heat welded. Heavy and of limited life. I have no experience with heat welding PVC. Non-black pond liner/roofing rubber would be very heavy. I know because I used it for a dome skirt. Not sure about yacht finishes. I have no experience and doubt it could cope with my dodgy seams. Thanks again

Thank you all for your excellent advice. I have discussed this so often [with myself on my blog] I can't remember whether I have actually raised it here before. Too many options!

My DIY, 10' birch plywood dome paint is peeling badly after only one winter. I used a cheap primer instead of painting directly with the "wood protection" paint. How can I avoid fibre-glassing the whole thing? Access is very dodgy due to the height. Sand the rough paint down all over and then paint a couple of coats with the good stuff? The summer working window is opening up and I really have to make a decision before the dome is ruined! 😱 Thanks..

Thank you all for your encouragement. We'd had a long sunny day with 70F. The thermal rippling was incredibly fierce despite the amazing transparency. The more northerly [upper] section of the prom looked like a huge balloon in slow motion. It was almost spherical and transparent with a ragged hole torn out in front by an unseen wind. ImPPG was left in neutral/default for the proms. Just opened and saved. It must have been doing something because PhotoFiltre couldn't do anything with the AS!3 stills. The stills coming out of AS!3 were quite unlike anything I was seeing. I suppose it couldn't lock onto anything with that much lateral motion. The surface didn't look remotely so transparent. More misty as it went rapidly in and out of focus. I'm amazed AS!3 could find anything to lock onto.

I just caught the better seeing before the trees grabbed the sun.

Thanks Pete. The forum images aren't like my processing monitor. Even when I view them on the same monitor. They look much lighter and less "dramatic!"

Still capturing away: South eastern area first is further away from the limb. Those with a bit of limb are much further north. It is a constant battle not overcook the processing .

Absolutely superb!

I spent an hour capturing and processing 60 x 500 frame videos until the trees intervened. Here are just two of them in B&W and colour.

Good luck! The seeing is impossible here, now. Perfect time for some lunch!

It was clear and steady earlier and then we had the thin, high cloud and lumpy seeing.

There is a disturbed area right on the limb at 10 o'clock. Darker depressed area?

Better seeing this morning. Wall to wall sunshine just beginning with thin cloud. Nice filament at 2 o'clock. [NW]

White is traditional for observatories for a very good reason. Temperatures of most materials soar when exposed to the sun. Paint them white and they remain very much cooler. A cool dome doesn't throw thermals across your field of view. I own a green painted dome. I like my sage green dome. So does my wife. BUT! So does the sun! 55C on sun facing, plywood panels! Same inside! Add a bit of white material over the top and it drops to only 22C. Proof enough for me! A row of tall, thin conifers in big pots can shield an observatory. From both prying eyes and from the sun. Roll them out the way if you need to look that way. EDIT: There are thermally reflective paints in any colour. No experience with them though. Paint half the dome green and let it face the garden. Let the white half face the sun.

Far too much cloud today! If it wasn't for the proms at 2 o'clock NW I'd find something else to do. Interesting bright clumps and threads.

The immediate response would be failure to focus. But, the sharpness of the limb is really quite decent. Colour cameras can easily pull out a lot more H-a detail than that. I used a 120MC for ages before I smashed the piggy bank for a 174MM. Tuning? I have no experience with commercial kit. You say you saw missing detail before or during the capture? Then the instrument was clearly working at some stage. Was this detail on the computer/laptop screen? Or visually with an eyepiece? I use SharpCap every day the sun is out. There's nowt wrong with it for solar H-a. 250/1500 frames is not unusual. You didn't use a "flat" wrongly and remove everything else? There are a couple of dust bunnies so probably not. We can't use the red herring that the sun is blank right now. Just blank of "big stuff" in white light. You saw stuff you didn't capture. Cue one of our solar imaging experts:

Good effort! That's a lot of work! Agreed on the permanent day shifts of working solar.

Good, wasn't it? I was quite pleased with these.

Thank you Pete.

Thanks Pete. They get better with the right seeing conditions.

Thanks. I haven't come across that method. I have been searching online for an answer without success. Ixus 117 sensor = 11mm[?] 20/11 = 1.8 amplification factor at full zoom. That sounds about right! Thanks. Sorry I didn't answer your question. The camera usually reverts to Macro for close-up.