Building the observatory

Today I installed the 230Vac power, put a nice artificial grass carpet in the observatory, treated the sides of the cut osb panels so they don't rot and installed 2 new 30x30cm concrete slabs under the rails.

And finally, I put the pedestal level and installed my heq5pro mount on it. And after that the scope of course!


Here's a view on the scope from the door of the observatory. The roll-off roof is open.

Backyard observatory installed

There are still many small things that must be done, but the main structure of my backyard observatory incl. the pedestal, has been installed by Nick Evans of www.alexandersobservatories.com.
Here Nick is putting the floor on the concrete slabs.





Here I'm cutting the construction plates. It was going nicely until the circular saw started jamming. That's because you have an electrician doing an carptenters' job.....:-).





Here's the finished observatory. I really like it, together with the sturdy 8" pedestal. Tomorrow I have to finish many small things with the cabling to the pedestal, power supply, wood finishing and stuff like that, but the basic structure is there.
Thanks for this really nice backyard observatory Nick!

Looking for a new job

I am currently looking for a new job as project engineer in industrial automation. See my linkedIn profile on:
http://nl.linkedin.com/in/patrickduis
I have 15 years of worldwide experience.

The One live on stage

Here the One is performing live on the revival of "Elastiek Muziek 2010".







This is me.....











This is The One!

Astrophotography day 2010

3 color (3 CCD) self built astrocam












Johannes Schedler's presentation. Beautiful astronomy picture. See his website: http://panther-observatory.com/

Building a backyard observatory

Last weekend I poured the concrete basement for the pedestal. It as a total of 15 25kg bags of concrete. This is the result.

Cows in the meadow for the 1st time!

After standing in the barn for all these wintermonths, the cows are very happy when they come out for the first time. Here we went to our local cheesefarm: www.ruurhoeve.nl.

Starparty!

Saturdaynight 17th of April 2010 was exceptionally clear. No airplanes because of the erupting volcano in Iceland. Here we are with a large bunch of enthousiasts from www.astroforum.nl. I am standing left in the back with my 200mm Newton.
I saw may galaxies in the Markarians' chain and also Comet McNaught.

Markarians' chain

A few days later I photographed the so-called Markarians' chain in Virgo. It is a chain of bright galaxies.







One galaxy, NGC4402, appeared very special to me. After searching on the internet I found that this galaxy had a close encounter with another bigger galaxy.

NGC4216

Last month I was very busy with building the observatory. I also got some clear nights for photography. Here's the beautiful galaxy NGC4216 in the constellation Virgo. It is a combination of 10min exposures resulting in a total exposure time of 1hr30min.