MSO Observatory

The first phase of building the new obs was finishing out the 14x30 metal building on site. It's been insulated and the interior walls completed, and houses my electronics lab, all my other hobbies, and will serve as the warm room for the observatory computers. I'm installing all the needed infrastructure, including a gigabit network running back to the house where it ties into a fiber Internet connection, and will eventually continue over to the observatory dome which will be about 225-feet away from the house.

​The server and workstations are up and running and I've been installing astronomy-related software. And I can start integrating the equipment and configuring software for the mount, cameras, focuser, and filter wheel in the comfort of the lab.
The parts of the Lancaster Dome are waiting to be assembled, but that won't start until spring. Since I don't have detailed drawings or an assembly manual, it needs to be at least partially assembled just to get accurate dome dimensions for drawing up the building and wheel base. And I need to confirm there are no missing pieces.

The dome will be built in place on top of the obs walls, although it would be easier if constructed on the ground first, to make the work of cutting the aperture and fitting the panels simpler. But if it was built on the ground I'd either need a crane to place it on the observatory building, or I'd have to disassemble it again and then reassemble it second time on the building. Either way would cost extra money or extra time.
I picked up a used steel pier I found listed on Astromart, that was only a little over an hours drive away. It's 10" in diameter, 39" tall (adjustable) and has a 13" diameter top plate. ​The tube is 3/8" thick and the top, bottom and adapter plates are 1/4" steel.
Summer is almost over but finally there's some progress on the new obs. Power and Internet were run out to the field in conjunction with running a water line from our well to the garden beside the new garage.

Power and a CAT5e cable also had to be run from the lab building to the new garage. Then a second run continues on from the garage to the obs. There will be an Ethernet switch in the garage tying the obs into the network in the lab. The cable run from the observatory to the garage is very close to 100 meters.
The beginning of the hole for the pier was also dug and pouring a concrete pier base is next, after cleaning up the hole. All the land here is a thin layer of soil over layers of shale rock. In this spot the layers of shale are horizontal and the pier will be sitting directly in the shale about 2' deep.

A concrete block structure will form the pier base and the steel pier will bolt onto it.

more to come...
Page created 7/24/2022
​Last edited 9/10/2023