Ad Astra Observatory

And, finally, The Time, has indeed, Come Today.

Some anthology later. Today, Observatory 2.0 has changed its call sign. Observatory 2.0 is now

The ad Astra Observatory at Hilltop, Woodinville, WA, known affectionately to its local fans as “Hilltop Observatory”.

I called the machine shop, and they had the pier ready. So I headed over there, picked up the pier, and headed to school to volunteer.

K and I got the thing up the ladder. It is quite heavy.

I lugged 04026 in myself.

Jared, who was also grouting the pier, helped me lift Trixie through the door opening. Had to twist her carefully to get her through. Thanks, man. That was pretty fun.

I pulled the bubble level out of its case, and a couple tweaks of the pier bolts later, it was in.

The wedge bolted on nicely. This is a very secure posting.

I leveled 04026 to 47.7º with the iPhone level. More on this later.

Counterweights, check. Trixie goes on the mount, already balanced for imaging rig, check. (Thanks to those nights spent setting up on the driveway)

Power supply, extension cord, check.

I am going to stop, here, for a moment, to give thanks to the astronomy gods. There is a well known phenomenon known as “The New Telescope Curse”. The act of buying a new telescope is usually cause for at least 3 days of rain, as soon as it’s delivered. It had rained a little overnight, and the forecast was for clouds.  The Olympics were throwing off big lumps of clouds at me, and I knew that there was little chance I would get to use the scope tonight.

I took a lot of photos and I thanked the guys and 04026 sat there, tracking the sky in a fair approximation of North.

I wolfed down a little dinner, and wouldn’t you know I found the moon in between a few clouds? So off to the observing deck, manually aiming the scope, trying to find the blurry white thing against the blue sky, grabbed the finder off of Pumpkin, and got it aligned to the main scope. And suddenly, there I was, checking out the moon from my new observatory.

Welcome home, Trixie.