TheSkySearchers

Well Folks,

As I mentioned in my welcome post, I'm back. Maybe not as much as I was in the past, but for the time being, I am back. First, the beginning of my place in space is the construction for my personal observatory. The contractor for the foundation laid out a 15x15 pad for the observatory building and a 20x35 pad for another building that would contain a 20x15 room dedicated to my astronomy pursuits among other things back in January. The concrete was poured about a month ago for both, which was when I found out that BYO didn't seem to be around anymore. Hope they bounce back. Bad thing is, I don't have images of the poured pads yet. As things progress with their construction I will share updates here. Hopefully ones with images of the poured pads soon. Now that we sprang forward, I hate this time of year, I can get outside with some light after work and get some. Hint, 20x35 = a 20x20 garage and a 20x15 storage room made into my office!

The observatory pad. Future plans for my observatory as my approach my "golden" years is to turn all my skills over the years in IT back to my hobby as they once were when I was younger. I've owned the gifnet.us domain for the last 23 years now and have run the web site for as long as that. I now run it down the VM OS. I'm high trained tech for a long time in a lot the fields across the industry and I'm going use them for myself real soon instead of doing it for someone else, always loved doing it! Hopefully sooner than later.

APT was my catalyst when I first captured the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in December of 20 on my cell and found APT not to much later for my Canon and then The Sky Searchers was my springboard into the sky and my journey began soon after.

Thank you all. So, follow along my friends as I transform www.GifNet.us into my online observatory and link the two together, more plans to follow. I hope to be around for a long time to come and I hope you enjoy!

Clear Skies my friends,
Chris

Good to see you back Chris.

I look forward to following your GifNet Observatory build.

Graeme

Sounds exciting! I like your idea of another building for astronomy stuff.

Welcome back. I look forward to watching the progress on your observatory.

Bigzmey wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 5:01 pm Sounds exciting! I like your idea of another building for astronomy stuff.

Gotta have a warm room, right? I love tech, so my warm room is going to be high tech. So welcome to the future gifnet.us observatory. Distance from obsy control to the obsy building is about 175 feet. I'm planning full automation and one my skillsets is network engineering. So, in goes the network. First, just ordered fiber for Internet access and connectivity to the web site. That installation will start in about six weeks. After that, I get to trench the wiring for power and network, joy, joy! Still have to figure out the obsy building now with BYO out of the picture. I do have a neighbor close to the obsy building but no lights at night other than his back port light when he takes his dogs out. Eventually there will be a fence with a tree line no higher than 15 to 20 feet between us, problem solved. Neighbor on the other side, I need to fill in the tree line already there to help filter out the security light they have, only one the area.
- The 15x15 building to house two fully remote-controlled telescopes and hopefully the potential for a third station for EAA or visual observation space permitting, concept under design.
- The building containing obsy control 20x35.
- The part of the building reserved for obsy control, 15x20. Has a standard door for entry and a 6 foot roll up door in the back. Hoping I don't have to share it with yard equipment!
- And the distance to the obsy is between 150 and 175 feet


Clear Skies,
Chris

I am very happy for you .

messier 111 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 12:56 am I am very happy for you .

Thank you,

Found a place where I want to slow down at. Just getting work to cooperate just as little bit would be nice between now and reality. Hoping in a few weeks for a little more time. In that regard. It's actually looking good finally but we'll see how long that lasts.

Clear Skies,
Chris

Hello all,

A quick update on this. Work is finally letting things settle down that I feel like playing again with my hobbies, at least on the weekends! And I've been able to settle down long enough in my new place to see the water table and how high it is here when it rains for a day or two. Gotta love Louisiana and Alligator Bayou that runs through my place in the back! I'll need to build a path from the obsy control building first to really bring the observatory online. Good thing too about that, now I need to figure out just what to do with a 15'x15'x6" concrete pad that you can see water close up to the ground level around the back when it rains for a while. Plans, plans, plans!!! It can be used in the meantime once the path is built as an outdoor observation pad.

I believe I may have found my third and final mount for my observatory kit, the true grab and go one, with any OTA I may care to shoot with. I do like my EQ6-R and AZ-EQ5, so when I saw the Sky Watcher Wave 150i Strainwave Mount, I thought I'd wait and see how it performs.

Building an on a deck on a foundation!

Clear Skies,
Chris

Congratulations on getting things worked out! (That's half the fun!).

Sounds like your retirement plan is moving right along!