Actual Astronomy - A Listener's Dream Observatory

0:00It's the 365 days of Astronomy Podcast, coming in three, two, one. A listener builds their dream observatory on episode 529 of the actual Astronomy Podcast. I'm Chris and joining me is Shane. We are amateur astronomers who love looking up the night sky, and this podcast is for everybody. Who enjoys going out under the stars? Today we have a special guest joining us. A listener. Kevin DuShare is joining us to share his observatory progress. So Kevin, let's just get right into it. Where are you located? How long have you been a listener? Well, I started listening to you guys in January of 2024. And I live here in Southwest Missouri, so a little town called Morrisville, which is about 20 miles north of Springfield.

1:07So most people know Springfield, the birthplace of Brad Pitt, also the Bass Pro headquarters is in Springfield, Missouri. I think that's probably where more people would be familiar. Good stuff, and how are your skies down there for doing astronomy? Well, it's terrible in Springfield, but in 1998, my wife and I decided to build a house out in the country, and so we were looking for land. Her family was farther north, and so we kind of met in the middle there and settled on Morrisville. And it's a portal for skies. So it's the only bad part of that is that the South sky is pretty garbage, close to the horizon, because you're looking back at Springfield.

2:07But it's still pretty good. Just trying to look up where you're located, kind of sort of, but yeah, it sounds like a lot of locations these days. Sadly, when you move out of the city, you end up in a place that has some good parts of the sky, and then some parts of the sky. Sadly, just aren't so good. So tell us a little bit about how you got interested in astronomy in the first place. Like, how did you get started, unless you were always interested as a kid? Yeah, I was always interested in it. I was giving away my age, but I was a kid when the Apollo missions happened. So everything about space I love, then I was a trekkie for a while. Star Trek was a obsession, so I did that. And then when I was 15 or 16, my dad bought me my first telescope for Christmas.

3:12And it was one of these acromats, these refractors, 60 millimeter, the ones that came in the wooden cases. Typically, those were Japanese made. I cannot find the serial number or a maker, but I think they were, it was a used telescope. And I have it to this day, actually, so I'm going to display it prominently in my observatory. Oh, wow, that's awesome. Love that. Very cool. But I just love it. It's got the wooden tripod. And you know, it has the had a came with a rod that attached to the finder bracket. And it had two plates where you could point it at the sun and it would project the sun's image on the back plate. And you could look at sunspots safely that way. It was awesome. Yeah, those old telescopes, we've done one or two episodes, I think, on some of the vintage scopes.

4:16And I love them. The quality of them is fantastic. And when you purchase them, depending on what you find on the mark, like in the used market, it can sort of be like a time capsule. You know, you'll open them up. And sometimes there's old star charts or old catalogs from like Edmund scientific. And it's just, it's a real joy to go through all of that stuff. I really, I really do enjoy it. And you know, what I like to say to people too is again, the telescope's perform. And sometimes, you know, you have to do a little bit of TLC to bring them back to life. But they should not be slept on. That's for sure. I always remember that when you bought chain and it looked like someone just emptied their garbage can for packing materials. That's right. That one came from Japan. And I'm surprised it made it here. There was an orange peel in there. Sorry, I did need to distract us, but all right.

5:17So that was kind of your first telescope. And so did you always keep up with a Kevin? Like, how did you sort of keep that fire? It didn't kind of drop off. It's hard to remember. I know that I pulled it out occasionally when there was an event in the sky. I always got it out for lunar eclipses. I even took, I had a dark room back then and I actually took photos through it. Sadly, they were not great, but I, you know, that was the film days. And yeah, but I, you know, astronomy was not an overreaching hobby back then. It was just one of my hobbies. And then I think, you know, I really got my first real telescope in 2012. And so that's when I bought the 12 inch light bridge.

6:17Shane would be familiar with that scope. Great performer. Yeah, go ahead. No, just it was a really good telescope for me when I had it. Yeah. So mine's still in pretty good shape. I actually had to clean the mirror this year for the first time. So that was an adventure, not too bad, not too bad. But that's been my primary scope until last year. And yeah, I love it. It's been great. The only limitation, of course, is you can't do any astrophotography with it. So I knew that I was going to have to get a tracking mount and upgrade a little bit before I could do that. But, you know, honestly, life was just too busy. So that's kind of the way that goes. Yeah, Tetris is all at some point it seems. Yeah. But so then I started conversing, you know, I started listening to you guys in January.

7:20And then, you know, Chris, I sent an email to Chris who was just, you know, just to, hi, how you doing? And this is what I'm planning. And I was at the time, I was planning what, what do I want to do when I retire in a few years? And I want to really get into the astronomy full time and do some astrophotography, do some imaging. And that's when he suggested I start out with a refractor for the imaging. And so I did go out and buy a, a spree 120 millimeter refractor and started using that. And I shortly found out that, you know, it's hard to do astronomy when you have no time. And, you know, you get home late at night and then you have to drag all this equipment out.

8:21I think Mark Radici talks about this, how you would, you would spend 30 or 40 minutes dragging out of chair and your scope and the power cable and everything. And you get all set up and then the clouds move in, right? And especially, I mean, even with the light bridge, you know, it's an 80 pound scope. So, you know, it takes a little bit of effort to get out there and do some observing. So that's when Chris suggested, well, maybe you should, you know, build an observatory. So I don't know if he suggested that or we were just, I was listening to the podcast and he said he, you know, he was talking about his building. And then I got sucked into it and it's his fault and it's Mark Radici's fault. And I like how you wrote me that earlier this, this week or I guess late last week. And then I said, well, I'm preparing a presentation about my observatory and I just blame Mark Radici.

9:27Which is really funny because when he listens to this show, he's going to be like, oh, he's talking about me and blaming their bad like choices on the decisions I helped them make. So Chris, you actually started talking about an observatory all the way back in episode 41. I wrote that down. That's good. I didn't know that I could use that for my talk. And then what really put me over the edge was Mark Radici was talking about the live image stacking. That's, I think that was, oh, no, he started talking about, well, he gave his talk about his observatory in 179. And then came on later about the live image stacking. And that just put me over the edge. I was like, okay. But what I thought was great about that was even if, let's say I buy all this equipment, I build this observatory and I don't like doing astrophotography.

10:37You know, then you've got this live image stacking, which wasn't around, you know, 15 years ago. Yeah. And I watched some of the refreshing views videos on that. And I was hooked. I was like, this is great. I mean, even if I don't want to do the all the post processing and everything, this live image stacking is amazing. And you can see some amazing things. And I should, I don't even interrupt you, but I should hop in and say, refreshing views is Mark Radici's YouTube channel. And people should go check it out. There's not as many people that are doing YouTube just focused on a mix of visual and more like very light imaging and doing some interesting stuff, which is sort of Mark's thing. Anyway, go ahead, Kevin. Sure. Well, no, it's just, and then also Mark eventually posted a video, which was the tour of his observatory.

11:42He did that for me. Yeah. I asked him to. And I don't know how many times I've watched that. Yeah. That is, that is great. And actually, I have, I did a screen capture of his observatory and studied it very carefully, you know. And what I really liked about his observatory, of course, is the warm room. The office is attached. And that was a big inspiration for me. And so, and particularly the warm room is important here because I'm a wimp when it comes to weather. You know, so we live in the middle of the country. We have the jet stream that goes right over. We're in tornado alley. So we get a lot of turbulence in the warmer months and a lot of humidity. So the really the best nights for good seeing are in the winter.

12:46And here I am on the wimp when it comes to cold weather. So I thought having a warm room would really be good. Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. How far? Okay. Well, let's let's maybe get a little bit more into the into the observatory. So yeah, you started dabbling a bit in the astro imaging yet the 120 a spree beautiful telescope. I don't know that I've ever looked through one of the a sprees and I've come close to buying one a few times just like an 80 simply because they're so well regarded by astro imagers. And to be frank, like if a telescope is really good at imaging and it can be used for visual as well. Typically that's a good telescope for anybody. Yeah. So it is a beautiful scope. I got a setting. I'm pretty impressed with the sky watcher products, the mounts and the end the scopes. I actually bought a I actually bought a 72 millimeter. Apple refractor to use to piggyback on my my big scope.

13:52Nice. Nice. Thanks. It goes as a viewfinder, you know. Yeah. Is the a spree a triplet or a doublet? I forget. It is a triplet. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to look through one of those like so many all echo Chris. I've heard nothing but great things. Well, fly on down. I'll let you have a. I really want to do more of more of the traveling around and and seeing people's observatories that that would be awesome. So welcome anytime. It would be great to fire up a YouTube channel and that's all it is you just drive around the countryside touring people's observatories. Please put it on video and one repository for all of that would be great. Be like cribs for nerds. So so you got the you got the spree you were like mark you were kind of tired of dragging it out. And then you were listening to the podcast. Listen to me ramblon as I do about my observatory and then complaining and all that stuff.

14:59So then where did you go from from there Kevin? Well, that's when I was like, OK, I've got to build this thing. And interestingly, when we bought this property, I there was a place in the back. I have 15 acres. So there was a place back where the observatory is now that I always kept mode for an observatory. And it's so interesting that you know, it's been so it's been I've been mowing that that place for, you know, 25 years and finally built an observatory there. Now you don't need to mow it. Yeah, now I've destroyed all the grass around it by all my construction debris. But so yeah, so then I started planning this thing and it's so funny. I've I have a send you these photos. I actually spray painted where the observatory was going to be and put a chair there.

16:04And I would go out there and just sit and drink coffee and imagine that there was an observatory. Oh, I did the same thing. This is this is totally rational and normal, but it sounds like you're a little bit maybe more secluded minds on a hilltop that all my the my neighbors can see. And I think they they wondered what was going on why I was sitting in this weird spot all the time. Well, then I started diagramming this thing out. And so as soon as I got the footprint and I decided the orientation, then I started digging the holes for the peers. And I think that's when I started I started taking a lot of photographs because I wanted to document it. Yeah, really well. And not so much for me, although I love looking back. I eventually want to post all these. I don't know whether I'm going to start my own website or whether I should just post them all on cloudy nights, cloudy nights, dude on cloudy nights.

17:09Yeah, probably. Yeah, because I think a lot of people would be interested in the the nitty gritty of these things. Yeah, I'm really good at building things. Obviously, but I still had to learn some stuff like I didn't know how to bend rebar, you know, yeah, silly things like that. And I made a video of how to bend rebar into these stirrups that you make the rebar cages that go inside the peers. Yeah. So yeah, so I do want to do that. So anyway, I started digging the holes and, you know, digging a hole in Southwest Missouri is an adventure. It's nothing but rocks. I think I took four wheel barrels of rocks out of the peer holes. I mean, unbelievable. I can tell you that these peers will never move ever again. Okay, I got to I got to walk you back one small step. Okay, because we're starting to go down a path that everybody seems to go down when they're talking about observatories.

18:18Yeah, and I want to get the size of your observatory, how you how you figured out how big or small you wanted, how many telescopes are going to go in there? How big is it? Like what's the footprint for the observing room and what's the footprint for the warm room? Okay, so the observatory runs north and south. It is the main observatory is 10 by 15 feet and then the attached warm room is just 8 by 8 feet. They're on the same level. So it's kind of on a hill. And so the north side of the observatory is about 17 inches off the ground. And then it's slowly tapers, but the whole observatory is up off the ground so that there's air movement underneath.

19:18Yeah, I've read that that's very important to keep moisture from creeping in and out of the ground into your observatory. Now I'm going to say it's covered with six mil black plastic and then gravel so that critters don't live underneath there or discourage from living underneath there. Yeah, I've never had anything I'm surprised to because when like I had mostly my my builder build it. And he ended up putting like a lot of like the spare parts that underneath, but we've never had nothing's ever lived under there. I've never seen anything underneath it for whatever reason. I don't think it's like a hospitable place. And it certainly helps prevent like it certainly helps evaporation. Like if I do get water in there, it just disappears. Like even if it if like really, really pours rain sometimes horizontal and I get I've had like little puddles in there.

20:21And I go up the next day and it's dry, dry, dry. So that that will do the do the trick. And that's one of the things that's why I don't mean interrupt you. But having the observatory raised up is something that Richard Barry talks a lot about as well. And I've been in a lot of observatories and and I've I've read like as many posts over the years on observatories as it is humanly possible, maybe even more so. And I saw so many people build an observatory beautiful observatory and they start using it. And then you can see the next post is how do I get rid of the humidity? And they're like, you need to raise it up. And they're like, it's like that can't be done. Well, you can either start all over again or put in a dehumidifier. And that just seems like what a headache you've gone through all this. And now you've got basically a moisture trap. Like you you have to fight the moisture first and almost observe second. Anyway, go ahead.

21:23Yeah, so then I'm getting back to your questions. So there are two concrete peers. They go a little more than four feet down on the ground. Each I can tell you, you know, it's funny. I sent some of the first photos that I sent you was as soon as I started this observatory, we started having torrential rainfall. And you even talked about it on the show. So I had to erect a tent over this whole building site. Yes, I remember that. It was wild. And the holes filled up with water like three times. Oh, man. And so honestly, I think it was a record rainfall for, I think it was, yeah, April and May into June. It was unbelievable. I remember because at first I was going to have concrete delivered for the, to pour these peers.

22:26And then I realized if I had a concrete truck, it would, it would get stuck in the mud. There's no way it could get back there. There's just no way. Yeah. So I ended up actually buying a concrete mixer at Harbor Freight. And I spent a whole day in the garage and I vividly remember this. I whole day doing no astronomy, no building, putting a concrete mixer together. You know, and I want to focus on this for a moment because I didn't go that far. I didn't put together a cement mixer. But I can't even remember the stuff I was doing. But okay, I remember one thing I did. One thing I did was I was trying to find something to help get the roof started when I opened it. And I finally figured out that the best thing for me to get was a animal carcass puller.

23:27And I remember putting together this animal carcass puller and starting to think about what I was doing is that in order to observe, I have to put together this animal carcass puller. And you're laughing. You're having you're like at the same mindset where you're putting together this cement mixer. You're doing these things that seem like they couldn't be further from doing like if somebody asked me what I'm doing. Well, this is what I'm doing. But this is why I'm doing it. It's so disconnected that you need to put together a cement mixer in order to look at the stars. How can that be possible, right? It's exactly right. And you know, if you get on cloudy nights, they have a in the forums, they have one on, you know, they have a forum on observatories. And one of the one of the pinned subjects at the top is post a photo of your observatory, right? You've probably been there a million times. Oh, yeah. I think I even posted mine in there somewhere. Yeah. So there's like 150 pages of observatories. And I love going in there because you see the most creative stuff.

24:37And I got a real kick out of this one guy and he built a beautiful observatory. He used one of the sky shed, not sky shed. Yeah, I didn't think of sky shed roll off roof. Anyway, it's just beautiful. But he listed this long list of all these things he had to learn what how to do to build this himself. And it was pretty amazing, you know. It was obvious that he wasn't a builder and had no idea what he was doing. And it was it was a funny list. But I was inspired by that. But yeah, I, you know, like learning how to bend rebar. I mean, I didn't think I'd have to do that. But here we go. Yeah. And that was for the appears I'm assuming because I think you need to kind of get them to hook into the ground or just the way the frame is so that the cement will be like best supported or something like that. Am I getting that right? Yeah, there's a there's a guy wrote it down. Let me see. There's a guy who is on cloudy nights that owns a.

25:43I forgot let me find the guy's name, but. Well, he can't remember his name, but he has telescope peers.com. And he's a guy markets those mother of all peers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I got some great suggestions. And he actually he gets on cloudy nights and helps people build their custom peers. And he sent me a couple diagrams. And then I downloaded a he has he sells a small book on peers. And so I followed all that to the letter. I wanted my peer to be these peers to be rock solid. I didn't get any issues because I thought later on, you know, in life, who knows? I might stick a 20 inch, you know, telescope on there. So yeah. So anyway, yeah, I poured these peers. I sent you photos of all the work that that took, but it was about 85 bags of concrete.

26:47Wow. And very happy with how those turned out. Okay. So I got a question. How did you get to the 15 by 10 size? I get like eight by eight for your warm room, but 10 by 15 size for the observator. How did you determine that? Well, actually, if you get on telescope peers.com, they have a online calculator where you can put in the height of your wall that you're planning. And I was planning a six foot wall block that we didn't do anything. And then if you put in the width and the space and everything, you put in all the numbers. And then the angle like where your horizon is obstructed, the degrees that you want to be able to see, like, you know, I have trees up about 10 degrees. And in some places, it's five degrees. So anyway, you put all that information in and it will tell you how tall your peers need to be.

27:54Okay. Which is very, very helpful. I didn't know that existed. And I did the math. And it was, it was a lot of math. More than you can ever imagine, because you need to figure out the distance from the center of your telescope to the end of the do shield to the angle that it would be on. To the wall top to the infinite horizon and all this wild stuff. Well, sorry, Chris, there's a calculator for that. I hate to say. Should have should have looked at that. No, I did. I found something that helped. There was somebody that posted something. Maybe it was even somehow referencing that. Yeah. Anyway, but I won't get into it. But what my, what my builder did is he kind of looked at what I did. He was like, well, why don't I just build a frame, put your telescope in the observatory before I build it like finished like he built the, the deck.

28:55And then when he did is he built a frame. And then I went in and observed one night. And the guy's so good. And then it just, it was the right height. And I was like, oh, well, that was just the right height. I was like, yeah, I figured that would be about the right height because I looked at your telescope one day after you observing the night before. I was like, all right, well, let's just go with that height then. Well, yeah, you know, I've heard of people doing that where they'll get the peers completely finished and then mount their telescope out there in the middle of the field and then work it out that way. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, with all the rain and everything, I just, you weren't able to do it. Yeah. So, so anyway, yeah, the 10 by 15 enables me. And I, so the, I have the big scope on the north end. And I have the refractor on the south end. And I offset them just a little bit so they both see Polaris at the same time without, you know, running into each other or getting or blocking each other.

30:01And you haven't mentioned, well, you haven't mentioned the big scope yet. Let's let's then go there. Tell us about the big scope because I was really surprised when you sent that photo of you standing beside this like research grade instrument. Tell us about what you bought. Okay. So, yeah, I, so it kind of worried me when the tariffs happened back in April. And I was like, I don't think you're alone. I don't think you're alone. Right. Correct. So I was like, so I have been, I, I've always wanted, first of all, it's really funny. I looked back all the way back to 2012 when I was starting to get interested in astronomy again. And I was on Facebook and I actually posted a photo of this Richie Critt, Crittian telescope on my Facebook page. And I said my dream scope.

31:04And it was actually a 14 inch RC. And I didn't realize that until yesterday when I was going back through my that, that I had actually bought my dream scope that I had posted back in 2012. Wow. But yeah, so I was worried about the tariffs and, and I knew that people were going to panic and just buy up all the scopes. Yeah. And these RC's, you know, there are a GSO manufactured scope under different names. One I bought was from I optron. It is a beautiful thing. I have to say. But anyway, I bought this scope because I knew that in the future I wanted to do astrophotography. And it was either this scope or go with a 14 inch edge. Celestron. Yeah. It was, it was one of the other. And through all my reading and everything, I kind of wanted this because with the open trusses, it cools down quicker.

32:12And it just seemed also, it's just a beautiful thing. It's just like, it's like the sculpture, you know, it is very. So anyway, yeah, I got it. And it's been in the box for almost a year, you know, I had it stored down in my steel barn, metal barn. And so I just got it out last Sunday. Wow. And the boys helped me mounted it weighs 66 pounds. Wow. And it's mounted on a Skywatcher EQ 8R Pro, which can handle 110 pounds. So there's room there for putting a lot of gear on it. So very excited. Nice. And I had a question about your, you mentioned your wall height being six feet high, which is about my head. I'm thinking minor more like maybe six, two.

33:14So, and I don't know how tall you are, but you look like a fairly tall gentleman. Yeah. Okay. And so do you have to duck when you go in or do you have your doors somehow adjusting so that you don't have to duck? You know, everything's great. I mean, it's a full 80 inch tall door on the, so my door is on the south of the warm room. That's the only door to the observatory. And then what's unique about my observatory is I do not have to worry about trusses going across. If you'll refer to my photos, looking at the north gable folds down onto a shelf. Yes. And then the whole roof slides off over the warm room. And so I've got almost nine feet to the, to where before you hit any roof beams.

34:14And, you know, the trusses at the very tip. Yeah. The plenty of room. I didn't want to have to worry about the roof hitting my scopes. Yeah. Like I forgot. So basically there's like the big scope, which is really tall. There's still nine inches of clearance between it and the roof, even when it's in a park at home position. Okay. So I want, I want you to just maybe I'll describe because you built it. And sometimes it's more difficult to describe what, what you built. And the reason I was real keen to talk to you, Kevin, is, you know, I've had, you know, and I, I think it's worthwhile talking to any listener about their projects. But when you started sending me the five, okay, well, that's cool. I can, this looks fairly sophisticated. And then you sent, and this is again, one of the reasons why I didn't respond because I could so hung up on the photos that you sent, which look like, I don't even know what to do.

35:20It almost reminds me of a church in a way. And I hope that's not offensive to you. But you've got, you've got these stained glass panels. So you have the walls, the walls, I guess, are about six feet tall. And then you've got like a little wall, you have got your rollers. And then on the part that rolls off, there's like another little wall that looks like it's maybe 10 inches tall or something like that. And then you've got these stained glass panels running across either side of different colors. You've got like a Robin's egg blue. You've got like a like a actual real sun orange. You've got red. You've got green. You've got one sort of multi colored. It looks awesome. And then you've got like, you know, the roof joist there. And then it goes up. And I just thought that was so fantastic because you're letting in light. But then it's like this beautiful like colors that are coming through. And then on one end, you've got this drop down wall that has all this clear looks like loose site.

36:26And so you've got a lot of light coming in there. And then, and then for the roof. And I was, I almost wish I had seen this before I built mine because there, there's a cab in your mind that has almost the same roofing material. And, and I'm not sure exactly what your material is, but it's like a copper color. And, and so it's a solid color. And for me, I wanted to get a lot of light in. And so I thought, well, the only way to do that is to get like a semi transparent roof. And then I kind of been struggling with that a little bit. And that was my choice. My builder was, was kind of recommending against it, but I was kind of a little bit stuck on it. But I think, I think this is a better solution to getting that nice light in the observatory. So you can go in and hang out. And it's not like this dark place. And then you've got a couple of windows. So, so from the outside, when you, when you look at the first thing that catches your eyes, this copper colored roof, then you can see these panels that are on both sides.

37:32And then there's, there's a window. And then you've got like a really nice, not really sure what to call that color. It's sort of like a very light green. I'm going to say. Or, yeah, it's that kind of sage green sage green. Yes, which is beautiful. We have, I'm not sure if you have sage there, but I've got sage right around my observatory. Yeah. And that's just like it looks so different from any observatory I've seen. And I mean, it looks really beautiful. Like it's, it looks very solid. And so it looks like you've even put like the sage green is almost, is that a siding or is that painted? That's vinyl. Okay. It looks very nice, very, very nice. And then you've got one of the rolls. Yeah, low maintenance. Then you've got one of it rolled open or part way open that I'm looking at with, with that front drop down, down. So that is really cool. So tell us like, why did you go, how did you even come up with that idea? I've never seen anybody put these panels in before and let the light in that way. How did you come up with that idea?

38:38Well, that was, that was one of my ideas very early on because, you know, the way that the roof trusses are, they don't just come across, you know, and meet at the, at the peak. I had to have a short wall on top of the roller section, right? To get that height that I'm. So then I'm like, well, what do I, what do I close, do I just close that up? And then it just, it just came to me. Well, why don't I, why don't I just put stained glass in there? I've got stained glass, we have a Victorian house and we have several pieces of stained glass. And I've always loved it. And, you know, I, I, I had remembered going to Hobby Lobby. I don't know if you have Hobby Lobby's there in Canada. You heard of that story. I can't remember that. But I've been to Hobby Lobby's before. Yeah. Okay. So it's, it's kind of like a crack, you know, they have crafts and all the supplies.

39:38They have a stained glass section. And you can buy these 12 by 12 inch panels of stained glass, very affordable. It's like $15. And I thought, well, wouldn't that be cool? I can get the light coming in. But I don't have to worry about the sun, bake, anything, especially on the west side. And it reminds me of the planets, you know, and nebulous and stuff. And so I thought, yeah, I'm going to do that. And I was just, I was so happy that that turned out the way it is. And you've got eight panels. So there's eight on each side, the east and the west. And then the, the gable that you're talking about that has the clear polycarbonate. Yeah. So yeah, that's a huge piece of polycarbonate. I think it was $100 for that one piece. But that was inspired by your observatory because, yeah, because I heard about your clear roof, your translucent.

40:44And I was like, man, I really need to get more light in here. Yeah. And I am so glad because that faces the north, which is perfect light, you know. Yeah. So on a, on a clear night, I can see Polaris right through that polycarbonate, you know. And, and I love that. Like that's one of the things I find with my roof. And, and one of the things that I do love about it is that when I'm, when I'm in there, like I've been in there just like hanging out. And it's, and it's cleared off. And I could actually see stars coming through the roof. And I was like, oh, I can observe. And I've rolled it off. And that's just super cool. I don't know why I think that's so neat. But it is, it's really need to be able to do that, eh? Yeah, definitely is. And the roof, the copper color, I just love. It's just one of those colors that's available at minars, you know, a special order. But it's, but it's not really copper. It's just a copper color. Yeah. To me, it looks like it reflects the heat really well.

41:47Yeah. And then, of course, underneath the, so let me describe the roof real quick. I know we're coming up on time. But, uh, so on my roof trusses, they're all painted black. And I like the contrast of the black, uh, trusses against the plywood that goes on, on top of that. And when the stained glass is illuminated by the sunshine, that light just comes off on that plywood. And it looks great. It does. I love, I love that. And I've kept some natural plywood in my observatory as well. I've just stained it. And yours looks very similar to mine. I don't think it's, I think it just takes you probably picked it out. You probably picked those out because they were nice pieces of plywood. Yeah. That's what my builder did too. And I think it looks fantastic. Yeah. And then on top of that, so it just, from the inside out, you have the beams, then you have a layer plywood. Then you have a reflectics material, which is that silver bubble wrap stuff.

42:52And then you have the, uh, the, the, the purlings, which are one by fours and one by sixes. And then you have the metal roof. Yeah. And so that should keep the heat, uh, from building up in the observatory. Yeah. And then the warm room is a little bit more than that. It has a, uh, one inch of, uh, insulation board, foam insulation board on top of the plywood. Oh, good. And then the metal roof. Because I just don't, you know, it gets really hot here in the summer, like, you know, 100 degrees. And so, uh, didn't want everything to bake. Okay. All right. I've got some questions. I'm going to start with this. Yeah. And, and I, and I looked at your photos. I saw the reflectics. I'm familiar with that being a cabin owner. Um, and, uh, and so I saw that that, you know, and that has some for the good insulating properties. And then I saw it looks like you've got some insulation in the walls as well.

43:52And so I, and, and that's in the main part of the observatory too. It looked like. And so are you planning to like climate control it and like AC it in the, in the, in the summer? And, and then let it go to try to keep it at ambient in the winter or what's your plan for climate control? Well, I put our 13 in the walls of the warm room because I definitely want to put a little heater out there for the winter. Uh, the only reason, so there's a big debate. You know, if you get on cloudy nights, people say, do you insulate your observatory or should you not? Yes. A lot of people don't. And that's fine. Uh, you just have to make sure you have a lot of air movement through there. Yes. Um, but I, you know, it gets so hot here and I, I worried about the sun beating on that siding on the west side specifically. And just coming right through the plywood. Uh, and so I, I, you know, monarchs had their insulation on sale. And so I bought a bunch of R 11, uh, and went ahead and insulated it.

44:56Uh, yeah. And I was going to do, uh, wood paneling on the inside. Anyway, I wanted to look nice like, uh, like a proper observatory where I could hang art in there and, yeah. Stuff. So, uh, I went that direction. You know, it didn't really cost that much to insulate it. I'm glad I did it, actually. Yeah. Nice. And so are you going to put an air conditioner in there or what's your plan? Well, I might, uh, you know, I put, I put windows in there and I could stick one of those window units in. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, if I need to. So I'm kind of, it's kind of a look and see, wait and see kind of thing. I'm hoping with all the insulation, everything that maybe it'll stay cool, you know? Yeah. It might. It might. I mean, it looks well built. Okay. Um, so that answers that question. Then the next question is it looks like you went with the, um, the garage door opener rail system. Or am I? Yeah. Yes.

45:56There's 20 rollers on each side. So the roof weighs about 1,300 pounds. Um, and so each rollers carrying about 35 pounds, which is well within its specs. But the beauty about that is, um, you know, if you have a roller go bad, it's really easy to just unscrew it, put a new roller in. Okay. Yeah. And I've got that lubricated real well. You know, I can't say that it's super easy to roll off, but it's very manageable for me. Now, if I get a little older and, uh, can't do it, I'll just put in a, uh, I'll just motorize it. Yeah. I would, I would suggest doing that sooner than later in my experience. Yeah. Um, if I were to get the outlet for it, actually, uh, the, so I prewired this thing. Uh, and, uh, so I've got outlets and they're, they've got weatherproof covers on them. And, uh, so I'll have an electrician come in and hook me up next, uh, well, here in a few months.

47:03Oh, nice. Nice. I'm looking, I have the, uh, the links and everything for the motor I used. And it's, it's pretty much near perfect. And I bought it. It wasn't really that much. I kind of feel like it cost me less than $500 Canadian dollars. Yeah. Which should be significantly less for you. And then, uh, my builder went up and put it on one day and it just worked. And I mean, there, there's been some tuning challenges. Um, I almost wish we had built it for the roof opener because we might have made the observatory like a few inches or maybe even a foot, um, wider in one direction. But anyway, regardless, it, it's not like that big a deal. And I'm sure it will work for you as well. And because yours is slightly larger, it might work a little bit better for us. It's almost overkill because my roof size is real like. Yeah, mine's really light and it's about half the size of yours almost. So, um, yeah, it's, it's overkill for my roof.

48:05But, um, it's the one, I bought the one that you can actually modify. Um, to, uh, to use like an external controller or like a cloud sensor. And, you know, it, it didn't really cost that much more. So I got, I got that sort of, uh, rigged, but you, you might find that more advantageous. Whereas you're going to be doing some imaging out of there. So, before we, before we conclude, let's hear about your first end observing in it. Okay. So, uh, as it is, when, whenever you get a new telescope and the clouds move in, right? Mm-hmm. But fried it was, no, Thursday night, we had a perfectly clear night. I couldn't believe it. Perfectly clear, no wind. I rolled the roof off. I pulled her aligned the, the, uh, refractor. And I had a great night of observing, even though the moon was at like 79%. Uh, Jupiter was unbelievable. I mean, just a rock steady.

49:06And I, I am really impressed with that mount. It is quiet and it's loose and it's just, it's just a great thing. I said a lot of different targets. Uh, I think I even tried M51 and I could see a little bit of detail, even though the moon was out, which was crazy. Um, the only other thing I might mention is I haven't used the big scope yet. So, can't wait to do that. Yeah. And can you use that for both visual and for, for imaging? And, uh, you know, the, the contrast is not going to be very good because of the large central obstruction. So, and you have to, you have to put space or rings in to get you back to where you can put an eyepiece because it's, it's basically set up for cameras. Yeah. Uh, but it is possible. So, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to do it. Now, their broadcast or forecasting rain all this week, of course.

50:10Um, so I don't know when that's going to be. But I will let you know when, when it happens. And you still, I know when we chatted, I kind of see, I, I, I start looking at these photos and then I don't, you know, and I was really excited to, to actually dive into this and to chat with you, Kevin. Um, and, and I, I feel like that wasn't coming across my messages because I was spending so much time looking at it. I had so many questions. I'm like, this isn't, you know, when you're at work and you're like, this isn't a conversation for email. It was like one of those situations. I think we just need to have a chat about this. Yeah. You should have just called me. Should have just called you. Yeah. But I, you know, I thought, well, why do a phone call and satisfy my curious? These about all this stuff. Why not just make it a podcast and then, you know, instead of me coming on the podcast and talking about your observatory and then reading your, your emails. Let's, let's just do this.

51:11It's super, super cool. I don't think I've ever seen somebody go from like just a 12-inch light bridge and, and dabbling in astrophotography a little bit to, uh, to such a setup with the, uh, with the 14-inch RC. It's, it's really, really cool. And I know you're not finished the observatory yet. And that's why you're getting close though. Getting close. And I know that you're a little bit reluctant to chat because of that. So truly appreciate you coming on. Well, I just, you know, compared to you guys, I'm just a amateur. So I, uh, well, we all are. I was really flattered that you asked me. And, um, honestly, I've really enjoyed your podcast more than you know. Especially, you know, I, I think this thing where you have listeners on is a really great deal. I mean, I think it's, I think people want to hear, uh, about the, uh, you know, the average guy trying to, trying to make it work, you know.

52:11Yeah. And, uh, and you've had some great guests on Mel Barthels. I like listening to Alistair and, of course, Mark and you had some great guys on. Yeah. I'm honored to be on your show. Um, even your friend, Mike, I enjoyed that podcast when you talked to Mike. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mike is like the, I mean, it's so weird to talk to Mike on the show because the show was for Mike. So, so yeah, it's, it's kind of funny like that. And then, and then there's, there's some other people that know Mike that listen to the show too. So it's really funny when we, when we do that. But, uh, but no, we appreciate your kind words, uh, for sure. And certainly look forward to where you go with the observatory and with that. Like, like, what do you, what do you think you want to do with, uh, with this now that you're getting operational? And by the way, it will never be done. You will never. I know. And then I'll, then I'll complain that there's not enough room, right?

53:13So the, the way that observatory is right now, it's got the two peers. I have a corner to stick my light bridge in because I figure, you know, if I'm imaging, I could, you know, I can look around at things with the light bridge. I'm never going to get rid of it. Uh, I don't know, you know, just kind of see where it goes. I'm really excited to do the image stacking and I've bought a couple cameras and we'll kind of see. I'll just kind of keep you updated. So I was going to ask you, uh, have you considered doing any of the live image stacking with your seven inch? Not, not really. The only thing I've thought of in, in passing, and they're pretty expensive is getting one of those, uh, new Pegasus electronic eyepieces. Uh, they run about 2,500 bucks Canadian. And I've, I've kind of thought about that a little bit, but I have a very, and I think I read it out around the new year, but I have a long list of things that are, uh, our higher priority.

54:22And then other things have come up like, I think I'm going to replace my rings. And so I have to get custom rings built in some other custom things. So I think I'm going to focus on really tuning the observatory and the telescope a little bit. And my, my builder's been helping a little bit with that. He's, he's awesome. Like, I mean, really, he just comes up and we hang out, shoot the, shoot the breeze. And then he's like, oh, we should adjust this. And then he gets up on a ladder and, you know, go down to my place and get a, you know, and, like, what turned into I'll get a screwdriver to fix it turns into three hours of us. Futsing around with stuff, which is, like, it's really cool. I really appreciate it. And I do want to say this one thing about the observatory also. Yeah, yeah. Before we conclude, uh, it's, it's also a man cave. Okay. So my wife complains about all the, the astronomy books and the scopes and the cameras and the binoculars all over the house. Now it has a place, right?

55:24Maybe. Maybe. So then I'm going to hang out there and look at all my stuff and I'll be in nerd heaven, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I kind of thought that it would work a little. And it has to assert an extent. But then, yeah, the, yeah, I thought I'd be able to keep stuff. So I did put some things out there and then they end up getting more impacted by the weather than I would have thought possible. We need a warm room. That's what you do. Yeah. Yeah. I really like, and I really, so the, the hillside that Mark put his on. And now he's an England and he put his right on the ground with a bunch of pebble stone and that to keep water and moisture. It's a pretty fancy underground setup so he doesn't get too much moisture. And his, his hillside is somewhat similar to mine where I could put like a step down into a warm room and I could, I could theoretically do that.

56:27I would just probably need some sort of permission or exemption from the local, you know, municipal body. But the other thing is if I do that, I'm going to block the air from flowing under my observatory as much. And so I'm not really sure. And then the other thing is is that when I'm in the observatory, I'm typically observing at the telescope. And if I, and it's so cold here, like even when it's like minus four and it's been like pretty cold. I want to go in like to like a proper building and warm up. Like there, yeah, you know, if you're zero or plus four or something, you can go into, you can get your, your warm room warm enough to go in. But like here, like, I don't, I don't know that I'd be able to get to that level. It would need a lot more insulation and that it, I'm not sure it would be worthwhile. Considering I'm 80 feet from my front door, right? So that's good. I didn't know it was that close. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty close.

57:28So and like I can, I can, I can lay in my bed almost. If I sit up in my bed, I can look at my observatory. So it's right, it's right there. Yeah, but, but no, I haven't really thought too much about that live stacking. And when I get into astronomy, I, I get into it to do aster imaging. And I, and I bought a camera like a, like a film camera. They were going pretty cheap then because everybody was getting, starting to get digital cameras and stuff. And, and I took some photos and they were okay. Like North American Nabila and Milky Way shots and meteor showers and that sort of thing. And I built a barn door tracker and that kind of stuff. But I just really, really liked being out on this stars. And not, not like messing around, like not looking down, trying to get imaging stuff to work. And, and just really enjoyed being being out, either with myself, under the stars and observing or, or just observing with other people and, and, and looking at this stuff.

58:29And then to be honest with some of my most enjoyable sessions have been even with shame where he set up a camera. We're doing some observing and then he's doing some master images. And then when we get home, like some of the images, I want to see like, like what you were imaging while we were observing. And I find, I find that's, that's really cool, but not something as, as much into myself. Now you sketch too. So that's, and that's really cool. Yeah, well, yeah, I try. Good stuff. All right. Well, we're getting to about time there. I think Shane, any, anything you want to have been with here in the last few minutes? No, just thanks for coming on Kevin. Well, I don't have an observatory I used to so I can relate to some of these conversations and it's always interesting to hear. Just to hear everybody's like thought process and kind of requirements when building an observatory because I don't think there's two that are the same. And I think everybody does a lot of research, you know, to figure out what kind of the options are and get some thought ideas.

59:31And then figure out, you know, what kind of matches your needs and your observatory looks incredible. That'll be a wonderful, wonderful thing for you for many, many years. Yeah, thanks a lot. Well, thanks for having me on and enjoy it. Good. So, so glad that you didn't so glad that I was able to, to convince you to come on today, Kevin, it was, it was a pleasure chatting with you. And like I said, it just seemed like any email that I would send back after you taking so much time to, to write us the correspondence and to send such detailed photos and updates. It just seemed like sending a quick email saying, hey, great photos if you're observatory. Just seemed really underwhelming. So I did want to have a chat and then start at thinking, you know, like let's just do this. Yeah, this is great. So I think it was, I think it was, or I thought it would be something the listeners would enjoy. And I know they will, people will just, just love this.

1:00:37So maybe Shane, and, and are you good, Kevin, if we put some of these photos up on, on our show notes, are we able to do that? Oh, yeah, go ahead. That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah, I stuck, I stuck a bunch in. They won't steal your thunder if, if you put it out anywhere else, but I think it just looks so fantastic. It's just, I can tell that you've built things and this is really, this observatory is as much like an expression I think of who you are as, as much as being just, you know, just a roll off. It's not a simple utilitarian thing that is going to be used for keeping telescopes in it. It's just like this beautiful building unlike, unlike anything I've seen before. It's, it's just a remarkable work, and I look forward to hearing how it finishes up. Great. Thanks, Chris, for your theater. Please subscribe, share the show with other stargazers, you know.

1:01:37If you have a project or anything, send us a bunch of emails, maybe we'll invite you on to be a guest too. If you have any questions or observations or questions, send them to actual astronomy at gmail.com. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're losing to 365 days of astronomy podcast. Cool. The 365 days of astronomy podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. Audio post-production is by me, Richard Jerome. Project management is by Aviva Yamani, and hosting is donated by libson.com. This content is released under a Creative Commons Attribution, non-commercial 4.0 International License. Please share what you love, but don't sell what's free. This show is made possible thanks to the generous donations of people like you.

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