Over the course of the past
couple of years, I have been carefully trying to figure out where I would build
the observatory. I needed an unobstructed 360 degree view to the horizon.
Dreamer…What I have is a view that has a volcano towards the southeast, a three
story house towards the west, a roof of my garage towards the northwest, and
two tall trees towards the southwest. Other than that it’s perfect. Well, not
exactly perfect. The volcano creates its own weather by not allowing clouds to
pass. During the summer months, Tsukahara will have thunderstorms when everyone
else is hot and humid. I’ll take the storms, thank you. What this means is that
I can almost rule out taking photos in the summer due to cloud cover and the
potential for lightning strikes. I’ll talk more about lightning strikes in
another post. I’ll just mention that lightning is a bad thing for the delicate
electronics associated with astrophotography. What kind of electronics are you
talking about? I’m glad you asked.
Here is a diagram of what I’m trying to accomplish…an observatory that is automated.
What does that mean? I like to sleep at night. I enjoy spending time with my
family. I do not want to stay up all night babysitting my equipment. Instead, I
want the computer to do most of the work. Believe it or not, there are inexpensive software and hardware that will detect the weather conditions and determine if
it is safe to open the observatory roof. The program will close the roof if
clouds roll in. Another program will wake the telescope, point it in the
correct position, focus, track the object, take the required photos, change
filters, take more photos, park the telescope, close the roof, and put the
system to sleep. Yes, the whole thing is automated. In the morning, a stack of
images is ready for processing. Does it sound too good to be true? Not really.
There are hundreds of backyard observers doing just that…getting a good night’s
sleep and creating images suitable for publishing. The trick is to have all of
the equipment working in sync and 100 percent reliable. It’s easy to say, but
incredibly difficult and frustrating to accomplish. Hey, if it were easy, then where is the
challenge? The journey to create this form of art (and it is art) should be
fun. I have to keep reminding myself, this is fun. It’s a lifelong hobby and
it’s fun. I’m having fun, but sometimes… George
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