I settled in the this district almost seven years from now.
Since my settlement, I dreamed of building a personal amateur observatory; during previous twenty years, I have been constrained to move from home to an observatory location : not good enough to follow regular planetary observations and to get benefit from very capricious weather ! Although not perfectly located for astronomy ( 60 km north of Paris ) , deep sky and and especially planetary observations can be carried out.
Brief, the true building project started in year 2000, more precisely in August ,after a couple of months of reflexion about shape to achieve and materials to use .
At that point, I want to pay homage to my father since he has been the project manager from its conceiving to its completion : THANKS DADY!!
Coming back to the project : We decided to limit the cost of project : working with cheap and easy to find materials ; second, We knew our limited skills in woodwork , moreover no special machineries were available . So the final shape would be an octogonal observatory ,made essentialy of wood , easier to make ( from our point of vue ) than a cirular one. And finaly ,with this approach, no tricky circular observatory window to realize!!. All the mobile part of the building should settle on the circular wall made of 6 rows of parpens.
And we faced another challenge : how to securrely and manually make it rotate without any track ?
The solution : cart wheels under each angle of the octogone and and four perpendicular counterwheels.
These four counterwheels make the heavy dome ( about 350 KG ) rotate properly ; and because of non perfect circular wall , I needed to hold each of them on four springs .I installed 2 cart wheels under the trap door . No motorization expected
Another problem occured, a three meters dome could not be made in my garage and then settled on the wall : too large !!. My father and I decided to build the dome directly on its final site .
We also faced a major issue, the wind ! ; with the memory of the very violent storm in 1999, and located on a hill two hundred meters high above sea level ,gust of wind could seriously damage the dome . So, I suggusted to surround the octogone with circular plywood panels, three mm thick. The circular shape would make the dome less vulnerable to wind .
The top door opened , visible on my home page, allows the front door to remain closed and consequently to offer a better protection to parasite light and wind .Don't forget that an F/D 9 Astro-Physics refractor is very sensible to gust of wind , even on the Atlux rocksteady equatorial mount .
What about roofing, it was realised with shingle panels studded on the timber: efficient and waterproof.
In conclusion : nothing is impossible for unexperienced do-it yourself enthousiast, even a painstaking work.
The full amount of such a project : less than 1200 € ( 1100 $ ) for materials and 8 months of work ( WE mostly) .
Feel free to e-mail me for more detailled explanations .
© Philippe RENAUD