Ad Astra Observatory

As an astronomer, I never thought I’d be so grateful to see a rainstorm.

We got the dome up on Thursday, and Friday was super rainy. This gave me a chance to check the dome for leaks, and like water has a way of doing, it found its way in in a few places.

There was one pretty serious, steady leak; it happened to be right at the top of the ladder when I got into the dome, which was helpful. 🙂 The “equatorial” flange (the horizontal one that the dome rotates on) and the “Dome Support Ring” or DSR (the “drip skirt” that the rotation motors actually grip and turn) have a nice bead of silicone between them, but the manufacturing finish of the parts is a little suspect, so they don’t necessarily come together “flat”, and at one point, between two bolts, they were far enough apart that water was coming through.

I was able to determine that just the one spot was leaking, so I moved that spot to an area that was easy to work on (I *really* like the rotation circuit I built!), and put a cup under the leaky spot while I looked elsewhere for problems. Jared came over, and in about 5 minutes, he had the leak stopped; turns out, putting a bolt right where it’s leaking helps draw the two fiberglass surfaces closer together, which squeezes the water flow off. Nifty!

I also figured out that every single solitary bolt that was put in while we test-fit the dome together, as well as all the bolts that were pre-fit by the manufacturer, need to be siliconed, or else they’ll leak. sigh. So there is another round of pulling bolts and getting elbow-deep in silicone coming.

If I am making it sound like a little drizzle came through and suddenly I was awash, don’t get me wrong — the inside of the observatory is remarkably dry, and, with the exception of the extra bolt to overcome a small manufacturing defect, the rest of the drips are all oversights on my part (Note: none of them are in the “wood bits”, just the “fiberglass bits”). I am so glad that I got a chance to find and deal with all this stuff before the scope and all the electrical parts go in. I don’t think that I would have asked for a rainstorm, but I am glad that I got one, so that I could give the building a solid test. Thank you, astronomy gods.

The Junior Astronomer and I also spent a bunch of time sweeping and vacuuming both the observing deck and the lower deck (need a better name for it — “control deck” seems pretentious when there’s nothing in there except tape and tools 🙂 ). This required several passes, because there was a lot of construction dust, but also because the ShopVac was lacking a “dry” filter, so it spit a lot of the little dust particles right back out into the air. Once I bit the bullet and put the dry filter back in, things went a lot more smoothly. I wouldn’t call it “spic n span”, but I am starting to get to the place where I could feel comfortable storing precision optics and electronics in there.

We are getting within striking distance of First Light! The stuff left to do includes a few items still on the observatory build contract (getting the door in, building the ladder and hatch, etc). The steel pier is taking a lot longer than I would have hoped — I really hate it when contractors treat my business as low priority, because I’m asking for some small one-off work. But, my understanding is that I’ll be able to give them the final measurement this afternoon (they need to create part of the pier and measure it with the mount before I can tell them how tall to make the rest of it…), and hopefully it will not take them long to weld together the rest of the pier. Once I get the pier, I can install the telescope. I have been building circuits for dome control and automation; that’s another show.

The dome carries a strange aura of peacefulness. Just being up there feels like being in a “no-hater zone”. I am really looking forward to spending a lot of time in the observatory.

Sorry for the “all-text” blog entry — everything more or less looks like it did before, only less dust.