Astro-DIY

We have finished the construction of our small urban observatory! To celebrate it we present a small video about its construction. In addition you can see that the location of the observatory is quite privileged (we have a large portion of the sky for observing).

As a part of the construction of our small urban observatory this last weekend we spend an afternoon to tune our EQ6 Pro mount. We stripped it down, we cleaned it, we greased it, we adjusted everythig that could be adjusted and we finally got it working in a perfect condition. It took us less than 5 hours and allowed us to  better understand its inner workings and to remove all the looseness in its gears.

To avoid forgetting which part goes where we filmed it with our cell phone and compact camera. We have created a video of the process in case it is useful for someone that want to dismantle his mount. Moreover, we have added lots of comments about the process below.

¡UPDATE!: The Jupiter photo in this page has been awarded with the first prize in the Astrophotography Contest of the XIX Spanish Astronomy Conference. 

Checking Internet one realizes that one of the most common ambitions of any amateur astronomer is to have an observatory. A place where you can easily observe without the hassles of mounting, connecting wires, adjusting your alignment in every observing session. In fact we are pretty sure that the best observatory is not the one with the best sky, less light pollution and best seeing but the one which you can use more often. Professional observatories don't choose their location in places with better sky but in places where the sky is good the maximum number of nights. Nights with good seeing conditions are almost everywhere and the important thing is to be there even if it is not a weekend or holidays.

From the beginning of the “La Azotea” project of making astronomy from a urban environment we have tried different places: Granada, Armilla and currently Churriana de la Vega in an attic oriented to the East. After some observation sessions we have noticed that Vega de Granada (a flat area near Granada, where Churriana is located) even having quite heavy light pollution presents some quite good seeing nights.

One of the drawbacks of our hobby is the large amount of instruments that we have to carry with us in each observing session: lenses, scope finders, cameras, cables, laptops, laser, filters and so on. And the problem is that it is not unusual to forget one of those objects at home, or even worse, at our observation site and then loose it.

To avoid this kind of situations many of us have created some suitcases in which we organize every astronomical gadget we have. In particular we have bought some good quality suitcases at  Berwall (german online shop).

Once we got our suitcase we have to accomodate every instrument on it. There are several way to do that, but one of the best that we have found is to cut a high density foam and thus adapt every single gadget on it:

But... how do we cut that foam with the shapes of our instruments? That is what we are going to explain in the following.