My Starry Night - Images from the Dark Side

Located on the edge of a marsh makes for some clear access to the sky. The slope of the land and the peat soil forced a deck installation.

The ramp does have the advantage of limiting the snow removal required to access the Dome.

This eight foot Exploradome with +6" high sidewalls makes a nice "Man Cave".

Nice secure location, with plenty of wildlife to enjoy.

With the floor heat soak system that is installed, and with some small heaters running, the sealed Dome runs 10 to 20F degrees above ambient outside temperatures. It generally is +18F to the ambient temps when operating.

Two wall mounted Hound Heaters have thermostat controls to shut down above 30 degrees F.

The lowest Temp that I have seen in the Dome is 5 degrees F on a -12F night. Cold but doable, and the Shutter does keep most of the power of the winds out. A really nice plus.

W-N-West view.

W-S-West view.

Shutter view. The Shutter desing cuts down on tramp light, incuding the Moon, at the trade-off of requiring rotation. The Shutter requires rotation about every 1-1/2 hours of session.

A nice plus to the Shutter design is some limiting of the Attack of the Killer Mosquitoes. I did mention that it i located on the edge of a marsh.

Custom Desk with shelving for the to Control Laptops. Both Laptops are Core2Duo with WinXP operating system. MaxIM DL softare used for guiding and image capture. A second backlit keyboard located on the desk surface makes inpit on the upper laptop easier in the dark.

The inner wall is insulted and lined. The flooring starts with two layer of .09 thick rubber roofing material.Two and one half inches of filtered and compacted sand, covered with electric heat blankets and then capped with 2-1/2" thick paver stones.
This helps keep the floor at cool in the worst of winter, keeps bugs and critters from moving up into the Dome and works to dampen motions in the Dome.

Mono Apogee Alta, custom Adapter, Orion 2"x4 Manual Filter Wheel, Orion SteadyStar AO with LodeStar Guide Camera, small Space to mount TS-Optics Field Flattener. Yep, it all works great together.

The Slip Joint is needed to parallel this OSC FLI Camera to the Mono Apogee Alta Camera.

Another view of the FLI, Adapter, Orion SteadyStar AO with Lodestar Guide Camera and TS-Optics Field Flattener.

The mono Apogee Alta with Manual Filter Wheel and Orion SteadyStar AO all mount and ready to go. I added a cable strap at the top of the Lodestar to hold an tension the small USB connection. It definitely helped.

A solid and rugged ATS Tripod holds the AP1200GTO Mount. A DJ type switch pnael at the Mount and at the Laptop Table help make things simplier.

The box has an overall reset fuse protection. Each Swtich is independent operation and glows faintly in the dark. Very nice construction at a good price.

A deer slips quietly by the Dome.

These are about as long a set of baseball bats that can swing in the Dome, while leaving some room for me to operate in.

The current Scope Pack. TMB130SS, F/7 Aries127mm fluorite F/6.9, and two TMB92SS F/5.5 Refractors on a AP1200GTO CP3 Mount, with rock solid ATS Tripod.

All four Scopes have 3.5" Feathertouch Focusers with Microtouch Stepper Motors for remote focusing. I have two Bahtinov Masks, one for the 5" and one for the 4" Scopes.

The Main Scope, the TMB130SS is a solid mounting. The Aries127 has a modified Casady TGAD Device for two axis adjustment. The twin TMB92s sit on ADM Aiming Devices and have a separate Adjusting Ring used to lock up any backlash that the Aiming Device might have.

The Main TMB130SS guides using the dual chip design. I will be installing a TS-Optics 9mm OAG with SBig External Guide Camera to allow for a Narrower Ha Filter to be used in the manual Filter Wheel. Currently there is a 35nm Filter installed.

The Aries SBig4K has a AO-8 installed. The twin TMB92SS Scopes have Orion SteadyStar AO units installed. This arrangement allow sfor 40-minute subframes off any of the four Scopes.