Red Barn Observatory MPC/IAU H68
Established 2006
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RED BARN OBSERVATORY CONSTRUCTION AND UPGRADE INFORMATION
During 2009, I decided that I needed/wanted to upgrade the observatory in hopes to allow the following advantages:
1. Raise the telescope room (and telescope) to allow more sky to be visible - build a two-story
2. Rewire the entire telescope room to "hide" all the wires - too many times have I tangled up in wires in the dark
3. Upgrade the software to improve remote operations and pointing accuracy
4. Mount the telescope on a very solid concrete pier - weight approximately 2.5 to 3 Tons
5. Design a computer controlled roll off roof
6. Upgrade the computers and data storage to at least 2 TB
7. Fully automate (as much as possible) the entire process of astrometry and photometry of asteroids and comets
These upgrades will allow the observatory to be nearly full-automated and will produce much more data per night - without me staying up all night to monitor the system. With the scope being mounted in a second floor room on top of a large concrete pier, it will be able to see more eastern sky than before. With the telescope in its old position, the main part of the building blocked most of the eastern sky. Although there are trees in the area, some of these will soon be removed to allow more visible sky. Part of the northern sky is blocked due to trees, but using a LX200 and SBIG CCD imager, the scope will not slew completely north without hitting the forks. So I will not remove any of these trees. I still have most of the eastern sky, and all of the southern and western skies (more than needed for my research).
I have also figured out a way to use my old Mel Bartels Scope Controller board to connect to the "garage door opener" that I use to open and close the roof. This will allow further remote operations since I'll be able to open and close the roof by computer. Once the software finishes running the nightly script and parks the telescope, it will be a simple process to remotely close the observatory from inside my home. The next step from this point will be to figure out how to use the software to shut down the telescope and camera, then close up the observatory once the script finishes.
Update:
As of June 13, 2010 I've started installing the track system for the roof. The construction is going well and is still on schedule. I hope to have the roof fully installed by June 20, and then start running the wires. The new wires will consist of a total rewire of the telescope room and all of the network cables will be rewired. I'd thought about going to a wireless network, but its just not as fast as a hard wired connection - well, through all these thick walls anyhow. I tried it once and the connection was very poor.
June 15, 2010: The roof is ready to be installed and hopefully the new track system will work out as expected.
June 17, 2010: The roof is installed and ready for the new wheels!! Once the new wheels are on, the motor will be installed and it should be ready to go!
More photo's coming soon.
UPDATE!!
June 26, 2010: The roof works perfect! I was able to finish installing the "finishing" on the walls of the lower floor of the telescope room and have purchased the materials to finish the interior walls of the upper scope room. The wiring is completed and the Network cabling has been wired into the telescope room. Exterior siding is being installed this weekend (in the super hot temperatures) and is progressing well. With any luck, the Interior and Exterior walls will be completed this weekend (all but painting). As of now, construction is ahead of schedule!!
UPDATE!!
June 27, 2010: Whew, it's another hot day out today and the outer siding will be completed before dark. I worked way past dark last night on the interior walls and the bottom floor is completed (except painting). The materials to complete the upper floor where the telescope is to be installed has been purchased and is waiting to be installed. If the progress continues as it is, the construction should be completed within the next two weeks. Once the telescope is installed, it will probably take a couple weeks to get the telescope "tweaked" and all the software running again. This has turned into a costly and labor extensive remodel!!!
ANOTHER UPDATE!!
July 4, 2010: The inside of the observatory is finally ready to paint! Painting has been scheduled to start tomorrow (Monday July 5) and hopefully most of it will be competed by the end of the week. Plans are to paint the telescope room a flat black to help with reflections, and the rest of the observatory a flat white. The largest room of the observatory will be for visitors and will also be our family and friends music room. It will be nice to have the scope upstairs working while having the family out there playing our instruments!
If everything keeps going well, the telescope should be back in the observatory by next weekend. Then I'll spend a couple weeks tweaking the mount and setting up the software. I should have scheduled this to be a winter project but it needed to be done - even with the HEAT!!!
July 5, 2010: The painting is completed in the telescope room and in the first floor under the telescope room. I painted the telescope room "Star Spangled" blue - which matches the blue 0.3-m SCT that will be reinstalled in the room. I also added a "shelf area" over the steps to allow a computer monitor and keyboard to be placed. This will save room. If all goes as planned, the telescope will be installed next week!
UPDATE!
July 9, 2010: The mount is completed and the mounting base for the telescope has been installed! I'm allowing the concrete to "cure" for a couple days before I install the telescope, and I'm also planning to re-check the roof again to verify that there is no leaks. Leaks + Electronics = DISASTER!
As of now, all wiring has been installed in the addition, the 2 ton mount is complete, painting in the addition is complete, and the motorized roof works perfect! The remaining work includes: finishing the paint work in the main part of the building, checking the roof for leaks, mounting the telescope and installing the computers. Once the computers are installed, they will be cleaned off and all software is going to be reinstalled. Nothing but the necessary software is going to be installed on these computers because they need to be as fast as possible - with few or no errors generated! The main computer within my home is also going to be cleaned off and the third hard drive installed in it is to be dedicated to storing images only. Once the CCD takes an image, it automatically stores the image on this computer. Too, I plan to (somehow) have this set so that when certain images are downloaded, they will automatically upload to this web site within private and password protected folders for a few other selected people to download. To do this, I'll have to upgrade my current Internet Connection up to 10 MB whereas the images can be uploaded/downloaded at a fast rate.
I still have trees to my immediate north and some to the east of the observatory. Some of the trees in the east will be cut down to allow more sky to be visible, but the northern trees will probably just be trimmed back since I do very little work in this part of the sky. 90% of my work is performed between the zenith and eastern to western skies. The northern trees do make a nice "wind block". With over 100,000 asteroids in clear view from my observatory, I don't think the northern trees will affect my research...
UPDATE!
As of July 29, 2010, the telescope is installed! The computer that controls the telescope is working great, the network is working strong in the observatory and the telescope is solid as a rock on the mount! If all goes as planned, I'll be able to use the weekend to tweak and adjust the alignment of the telescope mount and start "shooting asteroids" within the next week.
July 31, 2010 - All wires have been connected to the computer and scope and it is ready for adjustments. I had planned to have the observatory completed by today, and it is almost complete! The observatory will be back in operations within a few days - finally!!!
August 4, 2010 - The telescope was installed on July 29th, and as of now the software has been set-up. Everything is working. The problem - it has been cloudy with scattered showers the past few nights making it impossible to align the telescope. As soon as the skies clear (hopefully soon) I'll be able to align the telescope and finally get back to work!
August 8, 2010 - Due to rain, I've still been unable to make the final adjustments to the telescope that will put it back in operations. We had nearly 3" of rain yesterday not counting all of the major lighting that was produced from the storm! Once the storm passed, it sprinkled rain throughout the night. At least the heavy rain was able to put the observatory roof through a good "leak test". I found two very small "dripping" leaks and plan on fixing those this afternoon. As soon as the skies clear, I should be good-to-go! I've also updated all of the software and have it ready to work. As of now, I'll be using TheSky6 Professional, CCDSoft, T-Point, and Orchestrate to control the telescope. Also with these programs, they offer remote operations via the Internet and I'll work on that process once I have the telescope and CCD tweaked. Waiting on clear skies...
August 21, 2010 - Ever since I installed the telescope in the observatory it has been cloudy every night. I even got up this morning at 4 am to check for some early morning clear skies and there was no stars visible. A tropical depression moved through the area a week ago and I'm assuming that is creating all the cloudy skies. Hopefully the skies will clear soon.
While waiting on the skies to clear, I'm weatherproofing the outside of the observatory and I am baking the desiccant plug for the CCD imager. Soon I'll be out of projects and everything will be at a "sit still" until I can see stars again...
August 24, 2010 - Still no signs of clear skies. It was cloudy with sprinkling rain last night and heavy fog in the early morning hours. There's a chance of rain for the next week! While I'm waiting, I'm thinking about redesigning my entire web site. That will be a huge task but at least I'll be productive while waiting on the skies to clear...
Photos of the upgrade: These photo's are really large so you might have to adjust them in your browser.
Four new receptacles added and fresh paint in the main room of the observatory.
Half of the inside painted - before the scope was removed.
Telescope room roof removed and the old fold in walls taken down. Notice the trees blocking the northern view - which is fine with me. Too, some of these are going to be cut down to allow more sky to be seen.
A side view of the room at the beginning of the construction.
Inside view of the remodeling of the telescope room - northern trees also in the photo.
Added these 12" wooden frames so that the final height of the new room would work out to around 13 feet.
Walls going up and OSB installation begins!
A view from the inside
View from the front - some of the trees in the background will be coming down before they completely block the eastern sky!
The photo's above were taken as of May 21, 2010.
Before construction continued, the pier had to be installed so that proper measurements could be taken for the second floor system to be installed. Below is the progress of the pier as it is being constructed.
The original floor of the telescope area was poured around 24" thick so the floor under the pier had to be "dug up" so that the reed bar could be concreted into the existing floor. It is extremely sound! The pier dimensions are 32" x 32" - cinder blocks filled with 2000 lb/sq" strength concrete.
Lots of little helpers to work on the pier! :-) The pier is growing in size and weight.
At this point, the pier was tall enough to install the second floor system (and its still growing). This pier will weigh somewhere around two-tons when completed.
Here's the steps going up to the second floor.
A view from the second floor showing the steps and the pier entering through the second floor. Notice the pier size shrinks up in the second floor. Its extremely sturdy so the size of the pier was minimized to allow more room in the upper floor. There is still enough room in the upper floor to allow two people to work up there (if needed) and room for computers and other needed controls.
Here's a view of the entire pier as it is pushing through the second floor.
My little astronomers working on the observatory. :-)
The scope is in!
The Meade base is mounted in solid concrete. And yes, I did accidentally install it backwards! :-O
The telescope/CCD controlling computer.
Looking downstairs.
More pictures coming as the construction progresses...
Copyright © 2010 The Cometary Space Web of Steve E. Farmer Jr.
Last modified 08/31/2010 02:36 PM -0700
This web site has been active since March 1, 2006
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