Page 5 - Astronomy Book 1

I have always enjoyed being under the stars. Seeing the occasional meteor
in the panorama of the sky really makes for a memorable night. What is not

so enjoyable is having to drag out and align the telescope first and then take
it apart at the end of the session every time you want to use it. A semi
permanent arangement was required.

For the Green Top Observatory I wanted a system that was permanently
polar aligned and could be readied for use quickly. I also wanted ultimately

to image automatically all night yet have some protection for the mount
both when in storage and during use if the weather took a turn for the
worse. I seriously considered a roll-off observatory but in the end partly
because I already had an ideal location for the computer imaging in the
Studio next door I went for quite a novel approach to satisfy my
requirements.

My equatorial mount, a Losmandy G11, was permanently located on a steel
pier at the bottom of the garden. Luckily I have a relatively good East and

Southern outlook from this location which helps. I am unfortunately only a
few miles away from Reading town centre so my skies are not that dark but
for imaging I’ve never found this to be too much of a problem.

When not in use, the mount and telescope could be covered with a home
built fibreglass mini dome (Hence the Green Top Observatory). I usually
remove the telescope(s) and store them securely when the observatory is

not to be used for a few days. Re-alignment of the scope when remounted
can be accomplished in a couple of minutes so I found it better to keep the
optics in a nice bone dry environment.

Once totally set up, should the imaging session fail for any reason (the
power go off, the sky cloud over, it begins to rain or simply at the end of the
imaging session) the observatory was engineered to cover itself
automatically with a nylon cover and then depending on the exact nature of

the event, call for attention if required.

At the end of the evening or the next day it took me less than ten minutes to
pack up and replace the greentop mini dome.

For me I had achieved the balance I wanted at the time, of being under the

stars, equipment protection, security and convenience.
5