I finally got around to having the fence posts removed along the blue lines.  It took both my wife and I to remove the bloody posts.  These "fence" posts, aren't really fence posts as one would normally expect to see.  They were in fact up-ended railroad ties.  I guess the guy who originally built the house, thought it would be a great idea...and for the most part I think it is.  Like most railroad ties, their very large, measuring roughly 6 inches by 8 inches by 8 feet.  2 feet were planted firmly in below grade, with 6 feet above grade.  Combine that with the fact that they are literally soaked in oil/creosote, they're pretty much guaranteed never to rot. 

Good idea?  Likely.  At least until you try to remove them.  In any case, the rail ties are removed, and now I've got a large open area to work with!!!

Initially I though this area was 48ft x 56ft, but that was based upon using Google maps to do the measuring.  As it turns out, it was wrong.  My 5 year old daughter and I actually measured it today and confirmed that the actual measurement are 75ft x36ft.

So now, I get the fun job of going back to the drawing board and redoing the initial plan/ideas that I was working with.  Once I'm done, I'll post a couple of snapshots of the plans/blueprints.  I'm really hoping that during this project that I can do everything without needing any building permits, though given that I'll be including electrical, I'll most likely need an electrical permit.

First things first, before I can build anything, I need to locate an appropriate part of my property that offered the following benefits:

• Located somewhere on my property
• Far enough from the house, so that lighting from the house won't be an issue,
• Close enough to the house, so that snow clearing won't be an issue
• Oriented in such a manner that traffic down my driveway doesn't cause an adverse effect.
• Situated in some manner to maximize the celestial view
• Situated in some manner to minimize the effects of light pollution from the city of Winnipeg

To be frank, my wife and I own 60 acres of property, most of it forest.  The house site is sitting on about 2-3 acres of relatively cleared land.  Fifteen acres has been cleared for horse pastures, but the remainder is primarily forest.  But as you can guess, with all that land, I can't find a place to put my observatory!

To this end, I started out with a aerial map of my property (thank you Google Earth), and followed that up with a walk through the cleared pasture land (during the middle of winter I might add).  I quickly came to realize that although our eastern horse pasture is probably the best site to set up on, the distance from the house will likely be an issue, particularly in the winter time, when I would need to clear a path nearly 200 metres long.

Therefore, using Google Earth, I took this aerial snapshot, which shows/displays the main house site, including my wife's front pasture:

Using the same snapshot, I've added some markings/lines to indicate changes to my wife's electric fence lines.  The red line is where I'm going to have to install new electric fence line, fence posts and rails.  The blue line is where I'm going to remove existing fence line, posts and rails.  The yellow line is fence line that I'm going to have to readjust/fix, so that it is on the inside of the horse pen.  With the "blue" lines removed, and the "red" line installed, the "yellow" line is on the outside of the fence.

To put this all into perspective, the silver rectangular object near the top centre, is our 1400 square foot home (bungalow).  The gray square object near the top right, is my wife's 36x36 ft barn.  All told, the space I'm clearing up for myself is roughly 48ft x 56 ft.  Further, in these images, south is roughly in the bottom left corner.

From what I've heard from chatting with the folks at the RASC Winnipeg Centre, anybody who spends enough time as an amateur astronomer, realizes that the setup and take-down time required for a fully portable rig is sufficiently time consuming to result in less time being spent at the scope.  

Now with that being said, my rig is quite small (albeit the mount is quite heavy), but I find that between the weather and the cool-down time required, I haven't been getting in as much scope time as I'd like.  Of course the -30 to -40 wind chills in the winter have been the primary detractor, but even just the need to polar align the scope every time I go out, is somewhat annoying, but necessary task. 

So, without further ado, I've decided that I will work on providing my telescope and related gear a permanent home on my property.  In essence, I'm looking at:  

• Identify and clear a location on my property
• Install some form of (temporary) observing platform
• installing a permanent pier/pillar for the telescope
• Surround the pillar/pier with a building (the observatory)
• Construction of separate climate-controlled warm room (for electronics, computers, accessories, etc...)
• elevated decking to permit movement from the observatory to the control room, with minimal tracking of mud and debris
• incorporate some form of 'outdoor family area', by perhaps adding a gazebo or sunroom, as well as some place to host guests and operate the barbecue.
• possibly find a way to incorporate the firepit that I built last summer.
• ensure that there's some opportunity for the 'feminine touch', perhaps in the form of flower pots or other such ornamentals.
 

Now granted, this is going to be a multi-year project, but at least I've got a plan!

This page, and the pages I eventually plan on adding on (see right-hand 'blog' list), will be a permanent place holder, and public record, of the planning, design and construction phases of my observatory.

It's been a long time since the last log. it's not because I haven't been observing, it's just that
I've been too lazy to write a log...

Did some of observing and imaging of Mars, M42 and Saturn. Arianna also asked to see a ‘planet' so I showed her mars, which was sitting in the south-east at roughly 6:30pm. Also, Jan and Dallas did some visual observing Saturn and Mars.

Prime photography as well as eyepiece projection is a royal pain in the but with much better views obtained from visual observing. Unfortunately, visually, I can only push to about 240, which didn't give me a lot detail on Saturn, nor did it give anything more than a ‘big fuzzy blur' on Mars.

All in all, a good set of sessions.