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.
Here's a view on the scope from the door of the observatory. The roll-off roof is open.
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 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.
Here the One is performing live on the revival of "Elastiek Muziek 2010".
This is me.....
This is The One!
3 color (3 CCD) self built astrocam
Johannes Schedler's presentation. Beautiful astronomy picture. See his website: http://panther-observatory.com/
Last weekend I poured the concrete basement for the pedestal. It as a total of 15 25kg bags of concrete. This is the result.
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.
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.
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.
A few weeks ago I decided to build a backyard observatory with a roll-off roof. I got a tip from a member of the Dutch www.astroforum.nl that Nick Evans from www.alexandersobservatories.com already built many of those observatories, and also a few in the Netherlands. After discussing ideas and dimensions the plans became more and more clear. Nick also provides very nice pedestals, so I decided to also order this from him. The only thing I need to prepare is the concrete block with threads for mounting the pedestal on and the base for 
putting the observatory on. Easier said than done for an electrician like me. So first I started with making an accurate drawing, to get things more clear.
This is the 8" pedestal. It can hold a C14 if necessary. It will be made by Nick Evans.
This is a photo one of my co-workers stealthily took from me while I was IO testing a control panel......
This is currently my telescope. It is a 200mmF5 Newtonian on a HEQ5pro Equatorial mount. It is fitted with dew heaters, a 90mmF10 guidescope, guidecam and my trusted eos400d camera. Recently I added a motor to my focuser.
Last weeks our KSE team commissioned a large project in Germany. The old S5 control system was replaced by a modern ObjectAutomation control system. Furthermore all in- and output signal stations were replaced by new ones. Here I'm testing the new IO in one of the many control cabinets.
And here I'm testing the IO on the blender. This blender is the heart of the factory, it blends vitamins/minerals and many other ingredients into a mixture that is use for feed.
During 2 weeks of assisting the operators with the new control system I drove home. On that saturdaymorning there was a lot of snow. Is was very lucky because in the other direction were many stranded trucks.....
Last night the the first clear night in weeks, so I surely wanted to make use of that. I phothographed a bright galaxy in Leo: NGC2903. It is 25 million lightyears distance from us. This is a composition of 16x10min@ISO800, resulting into a 2hr40min exposure.
Here's a picture I took in the evening of 27th of January. Mars was almost in opposition. This was my first L-R-G-B experiment. All channels were separately webcammed with my modificied SPC900 b/w webcam with ICX-424 CCD in prime focus of my 200mm F5 Newton. A 2x barlow has been used. The frames were captured with WxAstroCapture, aligned and stacked with Registax5 and postprocessed in Photoshop CS2.
Last sunday was the yearly "Soepvliegen". We then fly in the cold. In order to heat us up after the flying we eat soup.
Here the piper is in the air, notice the ski's.
Here's an Extra in the snow on ski's.
And upside down......
Here's the airfield completely covered in snow.
