Dog House Observatory

	The Dog House Observatory The Dog House Observatory has been a long time in the making. The most important part of any project is good planning and most of the Dog House Project has been planning. When I finally did decide the weather, timing and of course the stars were right it has taken about one year to complete the building. As you can see the observatory is a brick roll-off roof building. The wall height is such that it blocks all the neighbour's lights but does not obstruct my usable horizons. The roof runs on four rubber wheels mounted inside unistrut crane tracks (upside down) This allowed me to lay the tracks precisely and weld tie-down lugs to prevent the roof lifting in high winds.
	The tracks are welded to metal ties running through the walls down into the foundations. Overall the building works well. The roof rolls smoothly needing only a single hand rolling force. Wind protection is good and most importantly NO LEAKS. For those purists out there who say "Shock, Horror... Bricks.... Thermal Stability....Poor Seeing" The single, cavity brick walls equilbrate very quickly and on the hottest of days I have yet to experience poor seeing associated with the building.
	Now starts the job of furbishing the inside of the observatory. My C11 has been temporarily mounted while I build a plinth. I have a small computer station to handle the ST6 CCD camera I use with the instrument. The details of the furbishment are of course in the planning phase but will not take as long as the building took to build. As the building was being constructed my wife's Old English Sheepdog, "Harry" decided I was building him a new home and promptly moved in hence the name "Dog House Observatory".
	The great thing about amateur astronomy is the diversity of activities possible. I have throughly enjoyed this project and learnt heaps of new skills such as dealing with the council, bricklaying, surveying, woodwork, metalwork, welding, painting and of course taking scrounging to new levels. I'd like to thank all those people who helped me throughout this project and I'm looking forward to getting serious in my astronomy.

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The Dog House Observatory