With overcast skies, overnight temperatures of about 9°F, and five-plus inches of snowfall over the past 48 hours, we’re pretty much buttoned down. Of course, changeable as weather is, they’re forecasting sunshine tomorrow, and 47° with rain by Thursday! Yeah, you saw “sunshine” mentioned but we have a healthy level of doubt where clear skies lately are concerned. In the meantime, there is snow to shovel and birds to watch… Oh! That’s a red-bellied nuthatch!
The first snow of the season arrived overnight producing, for the observatory, a beautiful daytime scene. Ground heat cleared the pavers around the structure but continued cold weather will change that — we’ll likely have to start shoveling soon. Several days of snow chances lie ahead with clear skies are expected during the day on Thursday, November 13.
November 3, 2025 — The air was still and the moon so bright and clear tonight, we had to open up the observatory long enough to take a peek and a pic! Moon was 92% illuminated in its waxing gibbous phase, lighting the landscape around us, no flashlight required. Technical: Askar 103 APO telescope, TeleVue Powermate 2X Barlow, Canon EOS 5D Mk. 4 DSLR, single exposure.
October 20, 2025 — So how well does the Meade LXD75 6-inch achromat fit under the dome? Actually, pretty well! Shooting the sun this afternoon was (outside of seeing conditions) not bad. The scope is about four feet in length, not counting imaging and observing add-ons, and the objective end swings well inside the dome. Access to the eyepiece and camera was good. Not much room to get past the visual end, however, so we’ll see! Main thing is, it fits. Pretty much.
The big Saia freight truck pulled up in front in the early afternoon July 10. The ready-to-assemble (RTA) observatory had arrived on two pallets weighing about 625 pounds each. After struggles getting it off the truck, aided by its very helpful driver, and with unexpected help from a neighbor, we stowed the base wall components in the garage. I moved the dome halves myself to a patio space adjacent to the observatory site where they are to be assembled.
Withering hot weather and a severe summer cold (ironic?) halted progress on the observatory dome assembly for several days. This afternoon, July 14, hoping to dive into the work tomorrow morning, I set up a canopy for sun protection. The portable shade along with a good electric fan ought to help extend the day’s work time until I can’t stand the heat!
At long last, here we go!
It has been a long, and bumpy road but, at long last, our SkyShed POD-S observatory structure is arriving! Delivery is set for tomorrow, July 10, via freight truck. Wrangling the large and heavy parts of the RTA (ready-to-assemble) building from street to site will be challenging but I think / I hope I can manage it. One looming problem: once put together, hoisting the assembled dome to rest upon the round base wall is a task that I’m uncertain how we’ll accomplish — the thing will weigh 350 pounds! I’ll need several strong people to help lift the dome but don’t know where they’ll come from.
In the mean time, I’ve assembled a collection of tools and materials required for the assembly, the building permit is in place, and so we forge ahead.
Following the evaporation of our first observatory deal we revisited our pre-purchase research from two years ago. We quickly settled upon the SkyShed Observatories POD-S Mark IV in this project reset. Today we placed our order and paid for the ready-to-assemble kit.
While we were originally hoping for fiberglass construction, the POD-S is built from double-walled polyethylene — much the same as plastic garden sheds. The material actually provides some advantages over other construction but presents an interesting issue: daytime IR heating. It seems white poly is translucent to infrared light (solar heat rays) which causes the interior to heat up. We chose a light gray color which, while not the classic choice for a dome or observatory, we are told will allow less of interior heating, as it blocks more IR than the white color reflects. This flies in the face of the usual reflective white or metallic silver specified for observatories but those buildings aren’t made of polyethylene.
We don’t have production or delivery schedule information at this time (the order’s brand-new) but there are other things to do such as acquiring a new building permit, pulling electrical wire to the telescope pier site, building a warm/control room in a nearby shed.
The bad news is that the deal we made for an observatory building is dead after two years of waiting. We received the news via email this morning. The final straw was that the manufacturer was unable –due to factors outside of his control– to ship the finished package! At a financial loss due to packaging costs, he canceled the deal and will issue a refund. The problem was so bad for him, he’s leaving the US market entirely!
The good news is that we have selected a product we had researched two years ago, along with our original choice. Ironically, we originally bypassed this manufacturer because it was going to be two years before their product could be shipped. Now they ship in 6 to 8 weeks!
We’ll post pictures and identify the new choice once we’ve closed that deal. We’re actually feeling pretty good about this. Except for the time lost not having an observatory.
We’re still doing open-air astronomy though we have a nice, solid, clean, and level space to set up our gear! This is the setup we were using today to record the sunspot at active region 4079 as it is about to roll over the solar limb/horizon. Fortunately, though it’s a very temporary setup, the portable gear we use for casual solar imaging is fairly easy to set up.
We continued experiments to determine what gear will work together for imaging. There were a few surprises and there’s need for more experimentation. What we settled on for today’s solar efforts is pictured above and includes: Askar 103 APO telescope, Meade LXD75 Goto Mount, TeleVue 2X Barlow, Baader Planetarium Safety Herschel Wedge, and ZWO ASI678MM monochrome planetary camera.
Although the sky was clear, seeing was a bit shaky so once again, sharpness wasn’t what we’d like. Still, in all, we got the shot we wanted and learned a few things about our astronomy equipment. Also, the sky was blue, the air was pleasant, and birds were singing, so not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
Frustration continues as we await word that the observatory has been shipped. We’ll be firing off another query of the manufacturer tonight reminding them, yet again, that we’re still waiting. Not that our questions or complaints have helped move things along. We’ll likely soon go ahead with pulling wiring through the buried conduit — utility power could be helpful even without the building. We hope to install landscape plants next week in the curved area along the north (left) edge of the patio. Our plant of choice is “Creeping Juniper”. Will we need to make some sort of temporary telescope shelter while we await our observatory (telescope shelter) in order to make better use of what we have? Maybe.
Stella-Luna Observatory 