ALMIRA OBSERVATORY | |||||
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A suburban observatory in Worcestershire, UK based on a metal garden shed. |
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Construction | Observations |
Latest - Image of Uranus and Neptune | ||
I was sitting down watching telly one night, when my wife came and sat next to me. She said "You know that money we've got saved up for a rainy day, why don't you spend some of it and you get yourself that new telescope stuff and observatory you've always wanted". After returning from hospital after stopping breathing and falling off the sofa, I said "Well I don't know. It's a great idea love, but I think it's a bit rash". (What was I saying?!). "No" she said, "it's your hobby and we don't know what will happen in the future, let's spend some of it (most of it actually) on something you really want now, rather than wait until the mortgage is paid off" ... I didn't say no a second time! |
Overview |
After much reading, deliberation and multitudinous postings on a number of web forums, I plumbed for a roll-off roof design based around a cheap metal garden shed. As far as I can tell, the original idea for adapting a cheap metal garden shed as the basis for a roll-off roof observatory came from a chapter by Bruce Hardie in the excellent book 'Small Astronomical Observatories' published by Springer Verlag. Whilst this book is no longer in print, you get a free copy of it on CD if you purchase the follow up book More Small Astronomical Observatories.
For a list of links to websites featuring other metal shed observatories, go the the Useful Links section of this website. In particular, the excellent websites by Keith Rickard and Mark Baines give fantastically detailed records of construction that I have found absolutely invaluable. Also a big thank you to Martin Nelson for showing me around his observatory.
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Equipment |
The centre piece of the observatory (quite literally) is a pier-mounted 200mm (8-inch) Meade LX200 Classic Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope mounted on a Meade Standard Wedge with an 80mm Orion 80ED apochromatic refractor piggy-backed on the LX200. |
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Contact |
You can contact me at michaelmorris4@hotmail.com. (NB: For security reasons, e-mails with no subject heading will not be opened). |
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Visit www.NightCal.co.uk to download this free observing calendar software |
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Last updated - 20th August 2010
Copyright© 2006-2010 Michael Morris