Started planning a backyard observatory in early April. Constructing a backyard observatory seemed the best way to celebrate my 25th anniversary as an amateur astronomer (1982 - 2007).

The main phases of the construction were:
1) preparing the ground (ie sod removal)
2) digging a 4-foot hole (12-inch diameter) for the concrete footing
3) pouring concrete in the hole
4) building and leveling the floor frame
5) erecting the observatory building (garden shed!)
6) adding power cabling (not done yet)
7) installing a pier for the telescope (not done yet)

 

After working hard during the long weekend to complete the observatory, I set up the 10-inch LX200 GPS inside the observatory shed for the first time!  The size and height of the observatory are just perfect. The roof opens and closes without any trouble. The floor is quite sturdy, however with the scope mounted on the tripod, the scope shakes too much.   The sky was somewhat hazy with some clouds so I just looked at several brighter Messier objects. The comfort of the observatory is awesome. 

The shed is made by Royal Outdoor Products and it's the YM808 model, which appears to be discontinued as of May 2007 (I bought mine just in time!).  The design of this shed is very suitable for use as an observatory because the roof slides up and down very easily. The roof is held shut by just four screws which are removed in seconds.

I looked at several Messiers, but they were all quite poor due to the hazy sky.  Then I decided to fix the collimation. Following the instructions in the Meade manual worked perfectly and I got perfect collimation in just a few minutes. It took about 1/5^th of a turn of the screw to get it collimated correctly.  I looked a Vega and it was a very nice, tight, crisp image.  Then I looked at the “double-double” (Epsilon Lyrae) and I could not believe that I could detect the double stars with just the 26mm eyepiece (96X).  Then I used the 10mm Celestron Ultima eyepiece (250X) and the two doubles were clearly split with dark space in between.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen these stars split so cleanly. The collimation really helped!

Spent from 11am to 9pm building a temporary wooden pier for the observatory.  The job took a lot longer than I expected – lots of cutting, drilling, bolts and screws. Also, there were two slightly loose J-bolts in the concrete, but I quickly resolved the problem by stacking several washers on the bolt, between the concrete and the bottom nut. I tested the pier from 22:00 to 23:00 and the positive is that it does not flex while the scope slews all over the sky – this is very good because it allows me to maintain the polar alignment.  The negative is that if I hit the pier, the scope oscillates for several seconds. 

My very simple top plate still allows me to polar align accurately using the wedge’s slow motion controls. The total cost for the pier as shown in the photos was $75 including 14% taxes.  The wood was about $25… hard to believe the rest was nuts, bolts, washers, screws, and angle brackets !!!  I was hoping for a more solid pier, but it will do for now as a temporary pier, while I plan and build a steel pipe pier in the next few months.

Update: I did some imaging on May 28 (see below) and the pier worked perfectly!

Pier attaches to the base with several angle bracket and through the bottom are eight 7-inch screws.

First time imaging in the observatory with the wooden pier. All equipment is working fine and the pier appears to be quite steady for imaging (as long as I don't hit the pier!!).  Quite clear, temp is 12'C, and the moon in nearly full. I did some test tracking on Spica and after 11 minutes it's just outside the crosshair center - not bad!

Below is an image of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy. Taken with the DSI Pro, IR filter, 21.2 seconds x 100 subs = 35 minutes total exposure