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Minimum height for observatory.


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Hello All,

Hope someone can help me here.

I am in the process of designing,a run off roof type observatory,by changing a 8'x4' shed.I am no DIY man,but my mate is.The idea is to construct a 8'x8',or possibly 10'x8'.My main concern is the height of the sides,was thinking 6.5 down to 5'.The telescope is a 10" F4.3 newtonian, on a HEQ5 GOTO mount.

Any advice/help,very much appreciated.

Regards,

Sooty.

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There are a few considerations....

how tall are you? and do you want to work in there in the day without stooping?

How high is your scope? remember the roof has roll over it

How much light pollution have you got? are there any houses close by that you'd like to block the light from?

What's the lowest you want to view, given your local horizon seeing etc? some trigonometry based on the height of your scope, the distance to the walls and the angle you want to see will get you to a maximum wall height

How much protection do you want from the wind?

Ultimately its all a compromise (well, except ensuring the roof clears the scope!).

Someone suggested setting up your scope on the propsed base and then using some poles and sheets or something to get a feel of what it will be really like. I did something similar indoors before the slab was done to get a feel for how high I wanted my pier to be.

I also have the flexibility of a south wall which folds down, so I can see more there - in other directions you can usually just wait until the object is higher in the sky.

HTH

Helen

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I suspect the reliable way (for me anyway!) was to place the mount and scope, in the proposed position and MEASURE things. Much easier with my (anticipated) Alt-Az head on a high pier. A digital level (Wixey etc.), on the scope, is very useful, and means you can work in the daylight. Also a Planisphere... imagination... etc. :D

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I have a pulsar observatory the side walls are 4'6" but the dome opening is 5' from the ground.

using a Newtonian scope can at times be difucult

My wife is much shorter than my self so I needed some easy way to make use of the equipment by both of us.

My solution was to build a telescopic raising central pier.

this is also useful raise the telescope higher than the side walls to view close to the horizon .

If I was starting again I would idealy have an observatory with lower sides.

So the design used by Dennis would be a better solution than just rolling the roof off.

but of course it would be much heavier to move.

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  • 8 years later...

made my concrete pier 38" tall with three three 12" eye bolts into the concrete having 6" sticking out . Had some control

on hieght in that manner . observatory was 8'x8' with walls 6'1" tall  but at the time i had a fork mounted 11" . After i switched to 11" CGEM DX 11" i had to make three heavy duty steel extensions threaded on both sides to raise the whole set up by 6" . So makes a big difference on type of mount . Better to do a makeshift wall to see how you fair before actually building it . Just in case i made the extensions out of old folding machine rollers and had machine shop tap both ends on each to attach to the three 1/2" bolts i had sticking out of the concrete . worked quite well . 

 

Tony B

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Hi guys

One of my club guys built same recently

He laid steel girders in concrete for roof to extend

A couple of other members, have standard commercial  4' X 4' garden shed, and split the roof, so that half slides both ways

Mount pier for scope 

Chase up some pics for u

 

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On 30/09/2009 at 20:25, Macavity said:

I suspect the reliable way (for me anyway!) was to place the mount and scope, in the proposed position and MEASURE things. Much easier with my (anticipated) Alt-Az head on a high pier. A digital level (Wixey etc.), on the scope, is very useful, and means you can work in the daylight. Also a Planisphere... imagination... etc. :D

Agreed.  Another important thing is to carefully think about the pier height.  I would err on the side of making it making it a bit too short than than risk making it too high.  It's much easier to add a bit to the pier than to chop a bit off!  This also gives you more flexibility if you ever think of changing the mount and/or scope.

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