I love astronomy, got attached to it while growing up. Some people buy boats, hunting gear, Harley’s, snowmobiles, tennis stuff and many other hobby’s. But I choose staring at the sky during the day or night, often till the sun comes up the next day. I started with small telescopes then slowly progressed to larger and better scopes, for a total of 8 telescopes. My wife asks why do you need so many telescopes, I then reply why do you need so many shoes. I then say exactly, I use different scopes for different views.
I usually set up on our back deck, then couple of years ago, I had to rebuilt our back deck due to cedar rot. So i took advantage of the construction and added my 8 foot by 10 foot “observation deck”, with the intent to build an Observatory. I also added a pier that extended from the ground level to just below the “Observation Deck”, with some help from my fellow astronomers Tim and JJ. Mind you our back deck is about 9 feet to the deck landing. Now that the deck is completely done I can now enjoy setting up by mount and telescope, along with all the other stuff such as cable runs. Then the alignment of the mount, then the neighbors get freaked out when they see the scope set up. Then run to close the blinds and curtains, I say really. They think I am going peak at them.
So then I started planning my Observatory, I purchased some lumber for the walls which I put together in the Fall of 2016. They sat against the garage wall until just recently, I took them out to the deck and put them together. Now the neighbors are really freaked out. While planning my Observatory, which is called Los Pantalones, I looked at many observatory plans out there in internet land. Some plans I could use while others work not work out for me. That is the best thing about looking at other observatory builds and getting feedback from the astronomy community, some good and others well take with a grain of salt. I also noticed that a majority of the sites did not include the observatory sizes without asking the author, “what size is your observatory build” some would answer and others would not.
So my Observatory Construction page, I will include more details into my observatory build, so Enjoy.