It’s been a while again due to work and the weather. A quick look around the sky this evening and make sure I still know how too use the telescope. So after getting focus
I slewed to Saturn as it was up and as expected it was very small.
I then slewed to the Pacman nebula, NGC 284 also known as Sharpless SH2-128. I switched to narrow band and the Ha filter. I plate solved, centred
and then proceeded to take 300s shots.
The camera was called to -15℃, the outside temp was 16.2℃. The focus position was at 18,000. The camera itself was set to Gain 139 and Offset 10, the rotator at 345.560°.
I took 75 x 300s images until I closed the dome, by which time it was very light. I went to bed in-between the start and end of the imaging run, but then realised the dome safety does not work due to the cable from the ASC being severed due to a Stanley blade incident with weed matting.
The good thing is GingerGeek and I managed to focus the ASC during the day on some trees in the forest across the valley and we managed to get it in focus.
I will process the data last some point and see what it looks like.
GingerGeek, Alan and Bob came over. GingerGeek brought over his 4″ dob and set it up on the patio slab tower. Alan Lorrain then went about aligning it on the Moon.
So with the Moon successfully acquired and whilst GingerGeek started looking at other targets through the scope, I opened the dome and slewed the 12″ to the Moon too.
Alan, Bob and GingerGeek found a small bright mountain inside the terminator. We decided to try and find it through the 12″. When we did find it we then tried to work out what it was.
It transpired to be Mons Piton, named after the top of mount Teide on the island of Tenerife. We would need to view it the news night to see it in full daylight.
Sky Safari
Next up was a quick look at the Ring Nebula M57.
We then wanted to seed if we could make out the central white dwarf.
However through the Red and Blue filters and the Luminance filter we could not see it. Finally through the Green filter it stood out very well.
Whilst slewing around with the 12″ in the dome, I had also setup the travel scope with the Mak 180 on top. I wanted to grab some data on Jupiter in particular and Saturn just as it was nearby,.
I took a whole bunch of data for the next hour or so which I will process at a later time.
Slight clear spell and no work tomorrow 🙂 so I am opening dome to see if my scope is now repeatable, so can I open, get object in FoV and then image whilst guiding.
Of course as soon as I opened up the dome it became cloudy. Fortunately not for long, so I waited it out then noticed next to the Home position a galaxy, so I went to image that, NGC 4437, which is a pencil thin galaxy in Virgo.
Unfortunately there was no decent guide star, even with the rotator I could not find one. So instead I took a bunch of 90s images, just short enough not to trail. I actually took 20 x 90s Lum and then 10 x 60s RGB all at Gain 10 Offset 10 and -25℃.
I then turned my attention back to M14, slewed and set the imaging running. Unfortunately I was only 1 frame in when I had to stop at 1:18am as the clouds had returned, so this time I packed up for the night.
Learning tonight was don’t forget to focus and take some darks for the off axis guider.
I will start by completing the TPoint run tonight before moving on to calibrate the guider and make sure I can get and image. So by 10:30pm it was just on the border of being dark enough to take and plate solve the first image and continue the TPoint session.
So by 11:30pm I had finished the 212 TPoint model.
The next thing was to do a Supermodel on the data. This reduced the error pointing from 500 & 23.7 arcsecs to 100 & 19.
Now connected camera to SGP and running autofocus on a mag 6 star, new focus position for Luminance is 18,312 at 00:13
I then setup OpenPHD2 to guide and here I hit a problem. The guider did not move the mount. I have not got a guider cable attached as I do not want to do Pulse Guiding. Instead I always do Direct Guiding. So I looked at the settings in PHD2 and the mount was not set. So I went and searched my blog and I need to select the ASCOM Telescope Driver for TheySky. However it is not in the dropdown list.
Finally after a lot of head scratching I remember GingerGeek removed ASCOM and upgraded when I moved house. He had inadvertently removed the said driver and forgot to reinstall. I went to the ASCOM webpage, found the driver which took me to the Bisque website and downloaded. I then installed, restarted TheSkyX using PHD2 after I had restarted PHD2, I selected the said driver in the Mount dropdown and connected. This then moves the mount when I calibrate and subsequently guide. Fortunately I found all these answers on my blog posts from last year when I had setup the guiding originally.
Now all of this is working it is rapidly approaching the time when the sky brightens, so it is already after 1am. I slewed to M14 using TSX, performed a Closed Loop Slew with the camera connected to TSX initially. Once I confirmed the object was in the centre of the FoV, I then disconnected the camera from TSX and reconnected to SGP.
Guiding started, all started to work well. A couple of snags, focus position was wrong in the filter setup so I need to change. Tries to autofocus on start of sequence so I need to change that. I then decided to grab 1, 2 and 5 min subs of LRGB to determine the best exposure. However half way through and some localised cloud rolled in and stopped the session.
The good thing its the closed loop slew is working well in TSX.
So with the local cloud still causing issues to the South, I slewed North East to another Messier target on my list, M29. Once again I setup 1,2 and 5 min exposures across LRGB to see which would be best. All the imaging tonight for Globular Clusters and Open Clusters was done at Gain 10 Offset 10.
I manage to get frames and then I was afflicted by the same cloud. So instead I packed up and called it a night.
Bob came over again tonight which is great company. He setup his Skywatcher AZ-GTI portable mount with his Tak FS60 on it so we could do visual throughout the night on a goto mount along with my star hoping through the 100mm binos.
Skywatcher AZ-GTI
I started the evening whilst light, measuring for the replacement T2 (M42) adapter for the camera train. Given the 0.083 microns per movement of the FLI Atlas focuser I need to reduce the image train length by 3mm. So the new adapter needs to be 31mm, current M42 adapter is 35mm. Meanwhile my AstroCat Fluffy decided to get some more sleep before dark.
Fluffy taking a hard earned nap
Next up was writing the Lat Long on the dome so I can give it to anyone that visits. With that done I started testing the rotation of the dome to make sure the dome no longer slips since I put the anti-slip tape around the edge. After spending some 15mins rotating the dome it seemed ok, it would be fully tested later when I redo the Tpoint model. This is due to the 2.1 arc minutes of error in my azimuth polar alignment that needs adjusting by 4.2 tics.
I adjusted the mount as above and ran a 20 point model. This told me the error int he azimuth was less than 1 arc min and that there was no need to adjust the mount any further, however it had low confidence. So now I will run a full 212 Tpoint model to see what it reports.
On starting the run I hit another problem, the mount hung and beeped. This was due to a balance problem on the tube which is weird as I thought it was fine. However maybe I had not rebalanced since adding the rotator properly. I removed a little weight at the front of the OTA and shifted it backward. I then tried again but again it hung and beeped. It transpired to be the same loose cale I had before, the focuser cable which had come loose. I applied some more white electrical tape to hold it in until I get round to changing the 2.1mm adapter.
At 23:40 I started a new TPoint run and am now 7 stars in and all is well. That did not last for long, around 47 Tpoints and I kept getting blank images. It seems the dome had lost its position. The Home sensor does not seem to be registering. I slewed the dome manually to Home at 123 degrees and synced that back into the dome controller. Starting the TPoint again resumed stars being seen.
Meanwhile Bob was moving from object to object without the AZ-GTI mount. M5, M57, M10, M12 along the way. We easily split Albeiro although Bob was slightly worried about my eyesight as I initially struggled. We saw the head of Scorpius pop up above the tree line but we didn’t get M4 from the IMT Plateau and Antares only just made it above the tree line. So I decided to relocate my bins to another spot in the garden by the Sun Plateau so we got M4 through them. M17 was seen through he 100mm binos also, looking remarkably like a Swan! Finally as it got light just after 3am we nabbed Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon.
By the end of the night I was at 187 TPoints so not enough for me to be confident the whole sky was mapped, nor enough to fix the model and have Protrack running. I will continue the mapping when dark tomorrow night.
Just watched the ISS go over, first time for GingerGeek. Videoed it using the iPhone 8 and it came out great. Also have the lovely noise of an owl in the background.
Started Tpoint at 11pm. Used 30 second exposures and image scale of 0.33 arc/pix. I am performing a 212 point Tpoint model.
Well TPoint model complete, of course I forgot to initially do around 25 TPoints, adjust the polar alignment which is our in Azimuth by 2.1 arcmins and then rerun.
Meanwhile before we finished I ran one of GingerGeeks M13 images through PI as a single frame from his new camera.
Another long pause between observations, after what seems like 3-4 weeks if not 1-2 months of storms, gales force winds and rain. However, tonight Bob came over and now that I have the new rotator installed with the new adapters I could use the 12″.
We setup under clear, warm and light skies. For the first time we put a couple of chairs and table down by the IMT3b. Bob helped setup the 6″ dob and the 100mm binos. We opened the dome and awaited darkness.
I wanted to make sure that the rotator worked well, that the Field of View, FoV, worked within TSX and that I setup a small amount of Points on the scope. We also decided to see if we could visually see the Intellsat satellites and that I could track on them with the 12″.
Whilst waiting for darkness, Bob found what looked like a planet rising in the East, however it turned out to be Vega. We noticed in the corner of the IMT area by the IMT shed that you could see not only Polaris, now the Sycamore had been removed, but also low in the East and thus Vega at +11° altitude.
Bob then spotted Polaris first! Amazing! I normally find stars first, especially Polaris. However given Bob was in my garden and unfamiliar with the his bearings it was astounding he found Polaris so quickly. Well done keen eyed Bob 🙂
Soon darkness fell and we pointed the binos and scopes towards Intelsat. It became apparent quickly that we were not going to be able to eyeball it due to not having a good enough understanding of the surrounding star field. Meanwhile on the 12″ we slewed and quickly found the satellites. We then use the rotator to move the FoV so that we could fit 4 satellites on the chip which was pretty cool.
We then star hopped to M5 with the bins, then with the 6″ and finally with the 12″. The view through he 100mm binos was of course fantastic, fair superior to the 6″ dob. The image through the 12″ showed a dense star field.
I then set about collecting a half dozen Tpoints just to make sure that objects we in the FoV, however the first slew proved the polar alignment was good enough to do this. I produced a small TPoint model and stuck to that for now. I will need to go out later this week and perform a much longer automated TPoint. For that I need to fix the dome this is currently jamming.
We then sorted the rotator out, making sure the angle and FoV represented in TSX was correct. After changing the x and y values for the FoV indicator it worked perfectly.
About midnight we saw the best fireball ever cross in towards South East just below Arcturus. It was very orange and stunning.
After then slewing the 12″ to M81 to make sure the rotator reflected what we actually wanted to see, Bob and I called it a night. The Moon was due to rise shortly.
A good night for us and welcome after the rain and a harsh Covid-19 lockdown.
A lot of progress since my last blog. I have gone from an empty shell of a dome to an observatory able to take a first light photo!
The first challenge was the dome rotation. It was binding. I quickly found out, with the help and advice of Dave Boddington, that in fact the dome was not circular and in fact it was oval in one axis by around 2cm. This was enough to pull the walls in causing the dome to bind. So a quick look around and I found the culprit. Where the concrete on one part of the dome base had settled unevenly there was a 1cm drop and as I had tightened the dome bolts to it, it pulled the walls inwards.
To resolve I unbolted the walls, put my foot on the offending side pushing it back in by 2cm and had Luke drill and bolt new holes. We then found some slate shims and shimmed up the part of the dome where the gap was. This fixed the problem and I now have a round rather than oval dome 😎
Next up was digging out the surrounding ground around the dome, as you can see here, the ground level on one side is around 4″ higher than the other. This would take some serious digging and many, many wheelbarrow loads of soil to moved.
Now was there time for rebuilding inside the dome. I found the control wood board and fitted it back in place. We fed through the electrical wire from outside to both the inside wall and the pier.
Bob then came round and did the honours of wiring the switches up, thanks Bob!
Now it was mount fitting time. 🥳
A few days later Luke and I performed the first fit, then I realised we had put it round the wrong way just as my friend Lawerence had done the day before at his 😳 so off it came again and we lifted it back on the right way round. That night was the test of how aligned were we to Polaris. Well it turned out not well enough. 🥺 I was off by about a degree. The MEII was at the end of its travel so I would have to redrill the mounting plate.
Another day, another task. The mounting plate came off, Bob and I drilled and tapped new holes to match where it needed to be and then refitted to the disc brake on the pier. We then hefted the mount into place and bolted down. That evening a quick test at night and the mount was roughly aligned very easily👍
Meanwhile I brought the ethernet cable in from outside through the conduit in the floor and fitted to the internal ethernet plate on the wall.
Next we fitted the SQM to the new fence post previously installed.
Followed by the All Sky Camera (ASC) and the weather station (AAG).
We then dug trenches for the cables and used some spare guttering to cover and backfilled with shingle overlaid with weed matting. Later we will place further weed matting down and add more shingle.
We then dug out some more of the soil to the side of the observatory and placed it at the front with a line of bricks to show where the step for the new patio would go.
The following day we brought in the 12″ OTA ready for fitting.
It was the next day after bringing this in that we noticed the water pouring off the inside of the dome and poling on the dome edge. The MEII was stoked and the OTA 😱
The dehumidifier was retired from the IMT3b cupboard in the workshop and installed! I also put a small heater supplied by Bob in the dome to keep the dew point down. Luke then helped me fit the OTA.
Like with all things the first fitting was wrong, I had forgot to reinstate the long 16″ Meade losmandy plate to allow the OTA to be gripped by all 4 thruster pins on the MEII Versa plate, so off it came again and then we had to find the bag of screws that fitted the taped holes.
Once found we refitted the OTA, placed the imaging train on, installed the Officina Stellare TC-04 controller for the OTA, fitted the Hi-Tec astro hub and balanced the scope. 28KG of weights were added and the telescope was installed.
Another day past and my other friend came over and helped install the Nuc, Mac, Raspberry Pi and the Intel Windows PC all to control the dome, telescope and various cameras and weather station devices.
Now the dome could be remotely controlled from outside 😉
Last but not least I installed the power for the mount after heading indoors to find the mount was not connecting.
I also installed the cameras for the North East and West positions in the dome to view the OTA in action and one on the end of the 12″ OTA to see where the slit is.
Then this morning I painted around the edge of the dome with fibreglass sealant.
I also noted the dehumidifier was working and nicely draining the water outside the dome.
Next up is commissioning the scope to get a T-Point, but here is my very blurry, not entirely correctly pointing first light image of an area of sky in Orion.
Today was a big day. Not only was the plan to finish the concreting within the dome, in this case the pier, but also to bolt together the dome itself and get it fitted. The first port of call however, was to grab the newly purchased Land Rover disc brake that had been sprayed with 4 coats of primer by Luke and cut and fit threaded bar to it with washers and nuts to hold it in place inside the concrete pier.
We then drilled and taped holes in the MEII adapter plate that had served mew well sine 2008 when it was installed for the original ME.
Next we created a former for the slightly wobbly post next to the observatory where the weather station pole was to be installed..
Then we started to concrete the pier. After 1 load the pier was looking a little more full.
Then after 2 loads it was nearly there. With 1 more bucket of concrete it was ready for the disc brake to be fitted with the MEII adapter plate.
It sunk in very nicely and we aligned just West of North to account for Polaris. We moved the pier slightly to make sure the top plate was level.
Next the dome segments were prepared in the same fashion as the walls with electric sanding and then using mastic and bolting together.
Next Helen, Luke, Ezri and I lifted the dome onto the observatory base. Job complete!
Well almost, well not at all, there is still loads to do. Not only does the dome not rotate fully, due to the walls not being perfectly round (I need to resolve) but also the shutter drive needs fitting and the dome rotation drive and all the electrics and……. well you get the picture 🙂
With some wet weather coming in I decided to put a tarpaulin over observatory walls as we had not fitted the dome yet. I used an old pole from a bird feeder not currently in use and the pot used for checking the concrete mix with the slump test.
I then fitted the electric cable that would be connected to the outside socket once the dwarf wall was built. I had forgot to run a rope or string through the plastic down pipe but still managed to get it through with a bit of pushing, including the run for the pier and the main outside wall.
Time to prepare the observatory walls to be fixed to the observatory concrete base. Because this observatory had been in place at my last house, we cut the mastic to separate the panels. This left large amounts of mastic on each of the dome segments and on the observatory wall panels. With the use of Stanley knives and an electric sander the job was much quicker than using sandpaper by hand. It still too several hours though.
Then it was a case of placing the wall segments down and biting each pair together running a bead of mastic down each. Now with 2 pairs done, we lined the dome up so that it was at best equidistant from the pier. I then drew a chalk line around the edge, drilled pilot holder where the dome walls would attach to the concrete and then we unbolted and moved the dome walls again.
Luke then had the fun of using the SRS drill which is the only drill to get through concrete to the depth needed for the long M8 bolts. Once all were drilled and the anchor bolt sheaths were hammered in, we ran another bead of mastic around the base and then placed the dom walls in their final positions. We then bolted them to the floor and the 2 pairs back to each other with more mastic here too.
By this time it was a getting fairly dark so we tightened up the final set of bolts and called it a night. Luke then spent some time raking the mounds of soil from around the sides and rear of the observatory that use to make up the vegetable patch. The lay of the land means we need to build up one end of the observatory land surrounding the dome by about 6 inches to allow for a flat patio later in the summer.
Finally the day after this I came out early in the morning and ran 2 tubes of silicon mastic around the outside of the observatory so that when I pain on the Rust-Oleum fibreglass Fillcoat waterproofing sealer that it would smoothly go over and not disappear in some of the larger gaps caused by less than professional concrete laying.
Another weekend, another day of concreting. Once done, there are 3 patios to fit, another observatory, rolloff, a Summerhouse and a workshop! That’s a lot of concrete and cement mixing!!! So you guessed it, more ballast!
Similar time as before 8:41 am and Luke and I removed the carpet from the old concreting which separated the block from the observatory base. This was carpet and plastic. We worked out that removing it was hard so the next time we would remove after 4-8 hours, time for the concrete to set and not slump but not so hard you have to use a cold chisel and lump hammer to remove.
Given the depth of the South side of the observatory base, we decided to place a lot of flint material on the base, this again would reduce the need for so much concrete. Another slump test and another successful mix.
By 10:40, some 2 hours later we were done. The join was a bit rough but we could chisel that down later if needed.
The spare cement was used to concrete in a manhole cover that was not concerted in by my house, also I used some to start the base of the small brick pillar nicknames Fraggle Rock by Gingergeek and 2 bricks for the electric to be fixed onto later.
Just before evening set in I went to inspect the concrete and cover before it got cold, I noticed a bird had clearly walked across it, that will now be some heavy bird I guess 🙂
During the week whilst waiting for the ballast to arrive for completing the observatory base, I took the opportunity to unpack the weather station, all sky camera (ASC) and Ring camera that would go on the aluminium pole in the garden.
I’d forgot how many wires there were for all of this given the ASC has a due heater built in, another set of wires and we had a secondary rain sensor connected. This was never commissioned at the IMT3 location so we removed from the setup and simplified the wiring, I must remember to give it back to Bob who kindly provided it.
The USB connection was in a waterproof box, this was for the ASC and the heater connections were here too. Gingergeek and I cleared out the spiders that had nested in there, filled the holes where they got in and did the same inside the ASC itself.
The Unihedron SQM was also unpacked and we have decided this would go on a separate post.
Meanwhile we unpacked the anemometer and repositioned it on the pole and allowed the ASC to positioned at the top to give an unobstructed view.
So continuing my writeup of progress on the dome build. With the pier block complete, now it was time to make the former for the base and start the concreting. The former was made from 5mm ply that I purchased from Homebase as they cut large sheets on site which is very hand for transport. When home I then cut the material further and then secured the strips together with some scrap wood I found.
With some rebar stakes found in the flow borders I kept the wood former in place. Again I cut a hole in the wood seen to the right of the photo above for the electrical pipe. The height of the block above the ground can be clearly seen.
With the ability to meet 1 person outside, one of my friends came over to help. I had already prepared some days earlier the wood former which was looking good. I noticed that to get the depth required the height of the observatory base to the North was significantly less than to the South due to the slope of my land. So I needed more ballast.
Travis Perkins was the cheapest for ballast locally and had delivered before. The driveway is rather tight at the property, however the drive did his usual finesse and reversed up first time. He then set about manipulating the fantastically well engineered crane are to move the bag to the rear of the vehicle without hitting my lamppost 🙂 Well done Mr TP Driver.
In hindsight I should have made the overall depth much less including that of the pier. I could drive a car on the base or build a house it was so thick, This in part was because we decided not to dig any further into the chalk for the pier block and instead have the block higher to make sure it was still thick enough.
Again the level of the wood was checked across the former to the pier block to make sure the level was correct. By 8:40am we had poured our first load and the long process began.
It was clear after around 5 pours that this was going to take some time and a lot of ballast! After 2 hours it was obvious that we did not have enough ballast and the empty bag stopped us progressing any further. It would be another week before we would have another opportunity to complete the base.
Later that night I found some rebar in the garden and Luke and I hammered it into the concrete to give the next pour in a weeks time something to anchor too Carpet and plastic was used to separate the pier block from the observatory slab.
A short trip out tonight and only with the binoculars. I wanted to start my journey through Orion star hopping using the Night Sky Obervers Guide as my bible.
With the tagging of objects as follows I setup the binos and went about looking up
Sp – Showpiece
Bs – Binocular Sky
Bo – Binocular Objects
34 Delta Ori (Bo) – The first object for tonight. Given the time I started and taking Orion’s belt as a reference, the middle star called Alnilam or 46 Epsilon Orionis was at an altitude of +09 vs if I had gone out earlier at say 7pm of +37 so this was a challenge before I started.
I did however see 34 Delta Ori (Mintaka) at Mag 2.2 and instantly knew it was right as I could see its double star companion around 1’oclock shining at Mag 6.8. It was a lovely sight seeing this visually tiny companion next to this larger and brighter star. Was very pleased I had started observing visually again.
41 Theta Ori (Bo) – Not seen as set
42 Theta Ori (Bo) – Not seen as set
43 Theta Ori (Bo) – Not seen as set
41 Iota Ori (Sp) – Not seen as set
48 Sigma Ori (Bs) – Another lovely little double star, just South West of the first of the belt stars from the left, Alnitak, 48 Sigma Orionis is a Mag 3.8 star and I could clearly make out the Mag 6.7 at around 10 o’clock.
B 35 – Not seen as expected due to lack of aperture
Basel 11B – This is a really tiny open cluster of stars, I knew it was there as I star hopped from Mu Gemini that I could see clearly at Mag 2.9. I could see Chi1 Orionis and Chi2 Orionis that form the upper stars in Orion’s club but it was easier to star hop from Mu Gem.
Basel 11B sits just North West of the club and reportedly has 12 stars, I could only see it with averted vision due to the aperture of the 100mm binos, however I would say 3-4 were visible, given they are Mag 10+ so pretty faint for this instrument.
Berkeley 21 – I was really not sure if I could see this, even with averted vision. The cluster is about Mag 11 so right on the limit of my instrument. I kept going back and forth, I was in the right area as it is fairly next door to Basel 11B. I jiggled the binos about but I could not be certain. I will have another go when Orion is higher earlier in the night.
So that was it for me, Orion was setting so it was time for bed.ß
Out this evening to find MEV-2 and Intelsat 10-02. Whilst some of the society is providing images to DSTL (MOD) within the UK on the MEV2 satellite, I thought I would have a quick go and capturing. Unfortunately due to the small chip the FoV was not large enough to capture useful images so instead I thought I would capture a movie. Gingergeek joined me by Zoom.
So after polar aligning I slewed to Intelsat 10-02 and with a small nudge of the mount the 2 satellites popped into view. The above image shows The Sky X I used to track the satellites on the left and on the right the capture software, firecap, of the individual frames.
I captured a fair amount and will publish a video from it shortly. Gingergeek and I then slewed to the Moon and took a leisurely stroll around the surface. It did to be fair, take us a while to work out the FoV indicator in The Sky X and set it correctly so we could then move to the areas of the Moon we wanted.
I pulled out the Mak180 tonight to see if I could image the Moon. After setting up I did not bother with polar alignment due to it really only being the planets which are less picky about tracking. However pointing is another matter.
I have decided I really must get a decent flip mirror. At the moment with the polar alignment not being completed and the chip on the ZWO ASI290MC being so small, I have to take the camera out to then eyeball the planet before putting the camera back in so that its light lands on the chip. Now with the Moon that is not a problem so tonight I did not have to worry.
Given the short imaging session this evening and the realisation that I had not gotten rid of all the dust from last years dust intrusion I took a single video run of a yet to be identified piece of the Moon.
I then moved decided to take some video footage of various parts of the Moon to also discover how much dust I had and how much of a problem it was going to be. Also I just like roving around the surface of the Moon.
I must also buy another ASI290MC as the one I have had its chip cover fall off and I have been unable to remove the dust from Coombe Gibit, so for guiding this is not an issue but for Moon and planets it is. Given I currently take the camera off the Skywatcher Esprit setup where it is used as a guider I might as well have another and then I won’t ever get dust in the new one which I would use on the Mak. As I’ve said before and will say again, Brendan would say it is cheaper to burn £50 notes than get into astronomy! How true indeed.
It’s been slow going since January. Lots of cold weather, rain and broken ribs had stopped me in my tracks from concreting the pier block. However on 21st February I finally had warm enough weather and a lot of help from Luke to start pouring.
We placed some flint in the bottom of the hole to help reduce the amount of concrete needed and to push up against the chalk. We then started measuring the cement and ballast out. We used Bob’s notes from our last concreting party which was 6 x 10kg buckets of ballast to 2 x 6kg buckets of cement. The water we used a bucket with a marker pen line on and then heaved it into the cement mixer.
The first slump test was perfect. The first pour looked good too. 2 hours in and we were 2/3rds done and nearly up to the downpipes that is to be used for cabling.
Before we started I made sure the wood former was level all the way around. This makes it super easy when pouring concrete, so as long as you pour to the top of the former it will be level as we proved on the final pour.
We then took 3 pieces of rebar that were lying around the garden and placed them where the pier would go. We performed a test fit of the pier housing, some air-conditioning duck so make sure the pier was central to the block. I must at this point thank Ian Piper who’s idea it had been to put the concrete pier in. At a cost of around £50 for the material this would be far cheaper than the £1,000 pier I purchased in the past and the £500 not so great pier I purchased from Pulsar Observatories.
After just over 3.5 hours we had finished and that included the final brushing over the concrete to make it smooth. Thanks Ian for the pier suggestions, Bob for the mixer, Mark for the enthusiasm, Luke for the help, Nigel for the base design and of course Helen for putting up with me and my hobby. A good start, next stop was to concrete the dome base.