Here’s one for our astronomy geeks. Our hacker [arrow] has made their own observatory!
This particular video is a bit over ten minutes long and is basically a montage; there is no narration or explanation given, but you can watch clear progress being made and the ultimate success of the backyard facility.
Obviously the coolest thing about this building is that the roof can be moved, but those telescope mounts look pretty sexy too. About halfway through the video the concrete slab that was supporting one metal mounting pole gets torn up so that two replacements can be installed, thereby doubling the capacity of the observatory from one telescope to two.
If you’re an astronomy wonk you might enjoy some of [arrow]’s other videos. Maybe with their observatory [arrow] will solve the problem of dark matter. We’ve covered heaps of astronomy stuff here at Hackaday before including how to make your own telescope right down to the glass and the world’s highest altitude infrared telescope.
Thanks very much to [Joshua] for sending us this tip via the tips line.
Very nice. But with all the automated and motorised roof and telescopes mounts, it has a whif of “doctor evil layer”. Where is the “laser on the head” shark’s pool?
This is very cool, I can see the immense effort that went into it.
But it also makes me wonder if there was an easier way of doing it? This is very elaborate but, overkill I feel
What an immense effort!
The focal lengths of the telescopes do not look that high – does this really need isolated concrete slabs? Insulated shed when you open up at night anyway and need cooldown? (active ventation is useful I guess) Looks like this way built in a backyard neighborhood – with random neighbors I expect a lot of stray light.
A larger “hobby” telescope (600mm mirror, 6m focal length) I visited last year was a little outside the settlement, almost hidden behind a row of trees. Sure – concrete all-around but the dome was not even insulated as temperatures at night changes anyway.
But hey – armchair complaints. I’d love to see what they do with it.
This is BY FAR the easiest and cheapest way to do this.
You need:
stable mounting that doesn’t get moved.
an “indoor space” for protecting the telescopes most of the time.
an unobstructed view of the sky when using them
ideally a stable temperature
Combine those requirements and you get a shed with a concrete floor, permanent mounts, and a sliding roof.
The roof needs to be strong enough to hold snow/ice if you live where they happen.
It must shed water off the outer edges, with no inner seams.
That means it is easiest to roll the whole roof away.
The telescope s and supporting computers, cameras, CCD sensors, and the rest likely cost $50k-$100k.
Building a $10k shed is cheap.
Notice that the concrete holding the pier is isolated from the rest of the floor, to minimize transfer of vibration from walking around.
A bit elaborate but the basic design is quite similar to roll-off-roof amateur observatories shown in “Amateur Telescope Making Book 1”, first published in the early 1900s. Most used human power to roll off the roof. I would have loved such a setup when I was really into amateur astronomy.
For the title of the article, I just have to point out that “replete” means “full of,” and isn’t a synonym for “complete.” The title says the observatory is full of retractable roof.
For the record I did actually check the dictionary for that word prior to submitting this article to the editors. I don’t often use the word so I wanted to be sure. My sources tell me that “full of” is one sense of “replete” but that “abounding” and “complete” are other senses of the term. It is grammatically correct and idiomatic to say that the “observatory is replete with retractable roof”.
Sorry but no.
Replete > “complete” is a common MISUSE, which is why you will find it in some “living” dictionaries.
That doesn’t mean it is a proper use of the word.
You are trading “people who don’t understand the word will get my meaning”
For “people who understand the word will be confused”
Putting it in a checker suggests “did you mean complete?”
Fair enough. I have updated the title for you. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
Be careful with this is the kind of pedantry because it causes language (and purists) to be left behind.
When the popular usage in “living” dictionaries evolves the meaning of a word, it isn’t just corruption, it’s evolution of language.
Language and words are an “of the people, for the people” sort of thing. They exist because of their usage, so if that changes over time, it changes.
There are literally thousands of examples of words that have different meaning compared to their usage hundreds of years ago, one being that “girl/gyrl” described any child not just a female.
Thanks for the warning, I will try to avoid the kind of pedantry you demonstrated with your post…
As for the word ‘replete’, here’s my dictionary’s origin description:
Middle English: from Old French replet(e) or Latin repletus ‘filled up’, past participle of replere, from re- ‘back, again’ + plere ‘fill’.
Uh and as for the word rape, as in ‘raping the language’:
spoil or destroy (a place).
Nice observatory.
Almost my childhood dream of having an “observatory room” in my house with a retractable roof. I am jealous.
lol. When I was a child I used to dream of installing conveyor belts in the walls so I could ship myself a sandwich from the kitchen to my bedroom automatically. :P
The heavy concrete isolation is important for taking photos. Didn’t watch video but I’m guessing these observations are either for Astro photography or citizen science experiments, either of which basically take tons of photos then stack them at which point vibrations can …mess it all up to be scientific. A no-compromises home observatory is such an aspirational goal. Love this.