Observatory

My observatory is a Skyshed POD with five bays. It has a flip up dome roof, and I am able to store all my telescopes and observing equipment in the observatory.

Observatory - Outside

We had a slab poured for the observatory, and Steve poured a cement pier for my telescope mount. Power was brought in when we had electricity brought out to the shop.

I found the observatory used in a small town about 150 miles away, and I’m the third owner. I think I’ve owned it the longest though, the other two owners went on to build roll-off-top observatories, but so far it has met my needs.

In the summer, the bees sometimes next between the two portions of the dome, so we have to watch out for that. The first time I noticed it, I had the observatory open, and had my head against the part where the two portions meet when it is open, viewing my computer monitor when I heard a buzzing. I looked around and found the nest which was about two inches from my face. Now I’m very careful, about watching for those nests.

Celestron 9.25 Telescope

Originally I used my laptop, but eventually purchased a used desktop PC from work for $25 and now I use that instead.

This telescope is a Celestron Edge 9.25 telescope and it works for photographing planets or small galaxies. For larger galaxies, it has too much “zoom” and you can only get a part of the galaxy in the photo. It also zooms in pretty close on the moon, so I use the Explore Scientific 102mm APO telescope for taking shots of the moon. The Edge telescope is quite heavy and it is a chore to put it on the mount when I want to view or photograph planets.

Explore scientific Telescope

One thing about astrophotography is that it involves a lot of cables. This is my main telescope that I use for photography. It is an Explore Scientific APO, 102mm. The camera is a Canon 60d-a, the astrophotography version. The mount is an Atlas Equatorial Mount, and when people say the mount is the most important purchaser for astrophotography, they really mean it. I had two different mounts before this one, and both of them were more trouble than they were worth. I started out with an AZ mount, which doesn’t work for long exposure photos; maybe 15 seconds or so. The second mount I purchased was a Celestron mount and while it was an equatorial mount, I could not get decent tracking on the stars, and I spent about a year fighting it, and then finally bought the Atlas EQG mount, and it works great.

I also have a smaller version of this telescope and the smaller sister for the mount to take to remote sites, which is what I used for the eclipse photos.