AN OBSERVATORY FOR THE GARDEN

@Radiation91 the viewing is quite good there. The house is in Petropolis, over 2,500ft up in the mountains of Brazil.

 

I've been to a lot of countries in the world but still prefer it here in Shineyland

Nice to visit, though!

 

You might get bored over the weekend though, Capney, as the Contractor arrived today and started digging out the base for the dome and so I've been taking pics of the progress that happened today. He's coming back either Monday or Tuesday to finish the job but considering the weather today [rain, rain, rain] he's done a good job.

 

Well, here's a photo diary of what happened on Friday when the Contractor arrived to start the base for the Observatory. But before we go on let me explain how "limited" my thinking was regarding the base. I was originally envisaging a simple "raw" circle of concrete 8 feet wide, 12 inches in depth, [to take the 8 inch long bolts that will secure the Observatory to the base], with 10 inches of the base above the ground, with steps. But the Contractor, Stan [aka Steve], stood looking at the garden for a few minutes and said "You can't do that to this garden, it'll jar and look wrong." So he gave me his idea of what should be done with the base. He agreed that the base should be circular, [the alternative would have been a square of concrete, which is also easier to construct, that would also jar], but he thought that an outer ring of natural stone cobbles would be easier on the eye and be in line with the garden style. He said putting an outer ring of concrete wouldn't look good either so that's why he wanted to put natural stone around. I could see the sense in that and, since it wasn't going to cost any more than the original quote, I let him go with it.
So here's the start

My original 8 feet wide circle marked out by me.



But with the addition of an outer ring of around 6 inches width of cobble, it made the base bigger by 12 inches in width taking it to 9 feet in width.......so we remarked the base

 

On the driveway, nice and tidy.












You can see the armoured power cables for the Observatory in the centre of the base circle and, temporary, on the rim of the base, before being routed underground in a trench to the rear wall of the Garage.

 

Then the cobbles were placed around the base to get a "feel" of which should go where and how it might look.





While all this was going the two Cats, [Sally and Jenny], were not allowed out of the House but Jenny was keeping an eye on things and who came in and out

 

One of my jobs was to cable tie the three armoured cables together once they had been cut to the correct length.





It started to drizzle.

One of the nice things that happened was that Stan's partner, who was working just as hard as he was, kept casting an eye around the garden and trying to see the hidden places. So after I'd made a cup of tea for everyone she wandered off down to the bottom of the garden and disappeared. Then we heard her calling Stan to come quickly!!! So we went down to find her and there she was sitting on the bench by the wildlife pond with her mug of coffee and taking pics of the pond!! She said that it was a place where she could sit all day in peace.....so it was nice that she really liked it, and doubly nice that it was a professional landscaper
liking it. Stan sat with her and had his mug of tea and a break and then they started again on the base.
When it started to shower, Stan disappeared under the Tarpaulin

 

Then some of the gang arrived from other jobs and gave a hand in the rain




The job finished for the day and covered with a Tarpaulin to keep the rain off until next week.


There are two phases yet to be done to finish the job, [a] add another course of the stone cobbles to heighten the outer ring to around 10 inches, then cut through the concrete patio to lay the armoured cables to the rear wall of the garage, cut a hole in the garage wall and push the armoured cables through to connect to the power source, then mortar around the hole and cable, after a week, when the outer ring of cobble is set and checked, pour the concrete into the circle to the height of the cobbles to finish the job!!

 

Stan's got a great eye for how things should go in a garden and the way he has gone with the job has settled any doubts I had about actually committing to it all, Anzia.
To be honest, I don't think the circle is big I've always been conscious of trying to limit the foot print of the base on the garden. Where it is now was not the first, second, third, or fourth choice!! as I did a lot of plans and staking out areas before I settled on the final place. But overall it is 9' in diameter against the original 8', which is still okay.
I don't know about the Observatory going to look impressive but it certainly won't blend into the garden, but, again, I did a lot of research before choosing the type I wanted. I looked at the sliding roof type but thought they took up too much space and sliding back the roof opened yourself and the scope to the outside elements which seemed to defeat the object of the exercise. The Dome type is versatile in that the roof will rotate and also the Dome keeps out any direct/indirect light making seeing easier.

 

Well, if you think about it there are plenty of challenges in astronomy, you could set a target of tracking down and viewing certain Stars, Nebulas, Open Cluster etc, there's between 200-400 billion stars in our Galaxy alone that's a lot of challenges!!

To be honest, the ISS is not really part of astronomy, Rad It's merely a man made satellite scooting across the skies I think if you restrict your astronomy thinking to just the planets you're doing yourself a dis-favour and missing such a lot of jaw dropping stuff out there. Your scope will you proud and you should see a fantastic amount of stuff out there. If you learn your way around the skies that will be a great help and you might find it'll lead you onto to targets you might not have thought about.