| Initial levelling, 240v power (orange conduit at rear), hole dug for pier at front. | |
| View from northern end of the site, looking south. Hole dug for pier visible at this end. | |
| Slab for shed is poured, pier is concreted in place. Pier has a hole for power/data and the orange conduit is seen here being assembled to run under the slab into the shed, it comes up inside the shed in the near corner. | |
| Slab surrounding the shed is poured, 50mm lower level than the slab for the shed to keep water out. | |
| Shed construction complete, note the cloudy skies :-( | |
| View from the observatory looking northwest back up towards the house. |
| My 13" scope on the pier, with the new Losmandy Titan mount. No cables or accessories are installed at this stage. | |
| Obligatory shot of me and my scope. | |
| Now we see all the data and power cabling installed along with the Gemini computer and smart focus unit, plus usb data cables. All the cables go inside the pier and through underground conduit into the observatory. | |
| The top section of the scope showing firewire video cables (white) and the two finderscopes, one for me and one with my old video camera which is used to locate objects. | |
| Here's the view looking into the observatory when the roller door is up. You can see where all the cables come up from the concrete floor, that's the end of the conduit that runs out to the pier. | |
| When not in use the mount and pier are covered by a mobile shelter which is anchored to the support posts at the top by guy ropes. | |
| Another view, this time from inside the observatory looking out at the mobile shelter over the pier and mount. The scope is kept inside the observatory when it's not in use. You can just see a small part of the scope in the right edge of this image. | |
| Starting to set up, the mobile cover is rolled back to reveal the mount and pier. |