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The Idea: The Highlands Astro-Shack started out as a simple drawing and idea I got for an observatory from looking at other similar observtory web pages on the internet. One of the best sites I found was the SEDS website which has a large collection of links to dome and sliding roof observatories. I liked the sliding roof idea best since it would be the least expensive and simple. The web site has plenty of good examples which I based my plans on. The Enclosure: I decided that I wanted a 12 x 8 foot observatory with an 8 x 8 foot "cold room" and a 8 x 4 foot control room or "warm room". The computer and astronomer would be able to control the scope remotely while warm and cozy with CD playing music and a hot cup of tea in total comfort even on the coldest Seattle nights! One night I was out there and it was 27º F outside, but I was a cozy 70+ in the warm room. I made a few drawings of the kind of obsevatory design I wanted. I then discovered that the local hardware store had the perfect sized Cedar garden shed that would work great for what I was doing, so I ordered the shed for $799 and that saved me a lot of hassle building my own design. The next (and very critical) step was figuring out the location in the yard to put this thing. Location in the yard: I have an apartment next door that has a bright floodlight in the parking lot, a tree that blocks Polaris in the summer, and a streetlight on the western side. I also have a large Douglas Fir tree in my yard which covers the NE part of the sky. I have a large backyard, so I had several options. I went ahead and sacrificed Polaris in the summer to have the scope just out of view of the apartment floodlight. Sure, I lose a little bit of NE sky, but I'll still have view of everything at some time of the year. The roof would slide to the west, blocking the streetlight, and going toward the light pollution of the city. Foundation: Now that the location and plans were decided, it was time to start laying out the foundation and digging the hole for the pier. I wanted to use the most sturdy pier I could since I wanted to get away from a tripod and go with something permanent that I could have up and running in just a few minutes without dealing with polar alignment, tripod setup and the associated sore back that goes along with that! The pier goes down almost 3 feet underground, and has a 3 x 3 x 10inch slab at ground level. The entire structure is reinforced with a cage of rebar, and all-thread which the mount attaches to (many thanks to Matt Slota for the rebar ideas and drawing). With Maia's assistance and knowledge of making cement, we spent the afternoon mixing and pouring 1080-lbs of cement into the hole while using a cardboard sonotube for the form for the pier. The pier, tube and supports were then left in place for about 10 days, the cement set really quickly and it was very sturdy after just a couple days. I even mounted the scope on it one clear night to test it out and it worked great! The Mount: The best scope is a bunch of junk if the mount isn't any good, so following a lot of ideas found on the internet, I built a mount from a couple of 12 x 12 inch square slabs of steel held up with shorter sections of all-thread. Before I mounted the steel slabs, I painted them black with some de-rusting paint. Since this will be out in the moist air, rust could be a problem so this should take care of that. I had to drill holes for the wedge in the 1/2 inch steel, and had a friend help with that using his drill press (Thanks to Matt Slota for the drill press work!). Fortunately, the holes in the mount and my calculations and measurements when installing the pier (I had to put in the 3 all-thread supports at the same time as the cement) worked out perfectly, and the scope was perfectly aimed at the North Celestial pole the first try - WHEW! That kept me awake at night until the first clear night when I could check my alignment. The Floor: Since you need to stand somewhere, the floor was the next thing to be built. I used a foundation of 6 cement blocks with the metal clamps to hold the 4 x 4 beams that supported the floor. I build the floor almost exactly as the kit plans showed, but I made a small change. Instead of using 3 beams across the floor, I used 4. I have 2 beams that go on each side of the pier rather than one down the center. The floor was then build around the pier, but it doesn't come into contact with the pier itself to avoid any vibration from walking around in the observatory while imaging or viewing. When the pier was built, consideration had to be given to the height of the floor above the ground, and make the pier tall enough to provide enough height in the observatory. There is about a foot between the ground (or the cement slab around the pier) and the floor. Walls: I guess there really isn't a whole lot to say about the walls since they were built exactly by the plans for the garden shed. Nothing too special. I just added a few diagonal 2 x 4 pieces of wood at the corners of the walls since I figured they would probably need a little more support and bracing since the roof would slide off and the walls would have to be self supporting. The inside of the walls are wrapped with a layer of black roofing tar paper just to add some weatherproofing to the walls. Cedar siding was then nailed to the sides of the walls. This is what really tightened things up and gave the walls a really solid feel to them. The Roof: Ok, this is where things got challenging! I didn't really have a solid plan for this when I started out, so once I got to the top of the walls I had to stop and figure this out. I used the same plans for the roof, but instead of building the rafters on top of the walls as the plans called for, I built a rectangular frame the same size as the beams on top of the walls, and built the roof on top of that. My backyard deck was the perfect size to lay out this part for construction, otherwise I'd have to do this in the driveway out front with all the neighbors staring at me, or on the lumpy backyard lawn. The thing would never fit if I did that! For the rails, I already had the plan of making an extension to the roof to support it when open. So I had to figure out some kind of track and roller system for it to slide on. I spent a few hours down at Pacific Industrial Supply in Seattle and found some aluminum rails which was just what I needed. They were kind of spendy at $150 total $3 a pound for about 44 feet, but they wouldn't rust like steel so it was worth it. (NOTE: the steel plates for the mount were also purchased here already cut to the right size). I installed the tracks on the top of the walls and supports then put 8 wheels on the bottom of the roof. I measured the wheel location, then measured again, took a break, then measured one more time....then a couple more times to be sure. After all the measuring, I mounted the wheels (each claim to have 90-lb capacity) on the bottom of the roof structure. The Rails: as I said above, I did a lot of measuring and aligning to make sure the rails and wheels would all line up once the roof was slid into place. I put the rails up on the walls in 2 sections on each side, and out on the rear supports behind the shed. I was originally going to try to gather a few of the boys together and help me lift the roof frame up on top of the observatory and pay them with beer and pizza for their efforts. Maia and I were were working on the completed roof and decided that we could probably drag it across the yard and wiggle the thing up there ourselves. After holding the entire structure above my head while Maia wiggled the wheels on the track, we got it up there and it lined up and rolled nearly perfectly. Later, I added 4 more wheels horizontally to guide the roof on the tracks to keep it lined up as it rolled. I didn't want any scrapes along my expensive aluminum tracks! After the roof was installed, I had to put something on top to keep the weather out. The kit came with a big pile of Cedar shingles, but I figured once I got that up there the roof would be extremely heavy. Instead, I was looking for some of those fiberglass panels but found that they were quite expensive. I found something similar, but made from PVC instead at a much smaller cost. This allowed the roof to weigh a lot less and makes it a lot easier to slide open and closed by hand. Interior: I wanted the inside to look as professional as I could, so I installed drywall on the inside walls to cover up the 2x4 studs. I actually installed a circuit breaker panel as well as a few outlets in the walls. Due to the complexities of electrical codes and the cost of underground cabling from the house, I got lazy and just run a couple of extention cords out there for now. One of these days I'll connect it properly, but I have to figure out the correct way of doing this. As for the drywall, I installed all the walls fine, but when I used the drywall putty, I incorrectly used the wrong kind of filler tape, got scolded by Maia for not listening to her advice, and then started figuring out a way to fix my errors. To "hide" my error, I put some bumpy texture stuff into my black paint so the wall has a rough look to it. It worked out ok in the end, but just don't look too closely at the joints please! This photo looks toward the back of the observatory to the control room. I have red light ropes coiled around since the observatory was operational while I was building it. Painting: To minimize any kind of reflections that could be annoying in the dark, I painted all the interior walls black (with the bumpy texture stuff mentioned above). This photo shows the "Captains Position" where you can see the dual monitor setup and Windows XP in the process of being installed on the computer. The computer in the observatory is an Athlon 1.33 Ghz with 512 megs of RAM, Radeon 7500 video card with 128 megs, several additional USB ports installed, USB to serial cable adaptors and a bunch of other stuff connected to it. The monitors were obtained at garage sales for about $10 each, and the computer is made of upgraded parts and a free case given to me by a friend. All the control cables to the scope run through a 4 inch hole in the bottom corner of the wall below the window. The scope can be completely controlled without leaving the chair. The computer is connected to the home network and has full internet access as well. I can control the scope remotely using VNC Viewer from inside the house. Carpet: To make the observatory as cozy as possible, I installed carpeting on the floor also. In this photo, you can see the red foam padding being installed on the floor. Again, even during construction the scope was put to use. The computer can be seen in the photo also on a temporary desk since the control room wasn't completed yet at that time. I carefully measured the dimensions of the floor and then drew out the "cut lines" on the carpet with a Sharpie pen while I had it spread out on the lawn. That was kind of difficult since I have a very lumpy yard! Fortunately, when I installed the carpet (all in a single piece) it fit nearly perfectly with only a little bit of trimming required around the edges. I also use the carpet to hide some of the control cables from the computer to the scope underneath. Always looking for ways to save money, the carpet and padding were recycled from a friend's discarded spare living room carpet. Curtain: To keep things as warm as possible all times of the year, I can open the window in the summer to keep the room cool and comfortable. In the winter I have a curtain in the doorway to keep the heat in. As you can see, I found a perfect piece of fabric for the curtain. The solar system fabric even glows in the dark for extra fun. In the winter, I hang a extra blanket over the doorway since this thin fabric tends to leak a little air around the seals making a chilly breeze sometimes. I've used the observatory in temperatures as low as 24 degrees with no major discomfort, numbness, blue fingers, or goose bumps! As for warm air causing air instability, I haven't had too much trouble with that. I do have holes in the corners of the ceiling so I can reach the roof lockdown screws, but I just stuff a couple of towels in there since I'm sure there is a strong chimney effect out of the holes. Also, if I do have warm air rising, it is on the western side of the observatory where the roof is as well as the most light pollution toward the city. I won't be doing much imaging toward that direction for that reason anyway, so it hasn't caused much problem. Completed Observatory: Finally, after about 5 months of on and off work during the summer of 2004, the observatory was complete. I started the project in late February and completed it around September. I could have done it in a shorter time, but summer activities often got in the way of progress. Is the observatory totally complete? No way! I still have a lot to do on it, but for the most part the main structure is done. Some things I'd like to do next: Cut out a section of the front face of the roof so I can open the roof without removing the Telrad or Orion scope when piggybacked. The electrical system still needs to be completed. I may do some kind of motorized roof (garage door opener?) but the rollers work well and it's not too heavy to move by hand. Things I have learned: All wood sizes are nominal: a 2 X 4 is never 2" by 4" (Maia kept telling me this when I was measuring down to 1/16 inch and stressing out over small things). Watch out when swinging a hammer toward certain body parts (fingers) Measure twice - cut once Woodworking is fun and very satisfying when you complete a large project like this! A suburban astronomer discovers tools!