The metal roof is put in place on the heated section and the bargeboards are finished. An entrance door is also bought second hand and put in place.

Building roof and adding door

The heated section is in focus and the outer covering layers of the walls are built and painted. The beamwork for the walls in the observatory section is also constructed.

The two sections takes form

The first building steps are taken and the beamwork is put together during a couple of sunny weeks 🙂

Observatory first physical steps

For almost as many years as I have been in this hoby I have dreamed about building my own observatory.

Finally the time has come 🙂

Observatory planning phase 

Oh boy! There has truly been a looong time since my last post. Almost two years has passed since last time I watched the stars in the sky through a telescope (and even longer since I posted an update on this site), and I must say it feels like an eternity. There are a couple of reasons for this of course. Other interests have temporarily replaced the need of starlight along with a change in my daily routines, mainly due to the move to Gothenburg. Another big reason has been the need of a new, more stable mount with higher accuracy. The original fork mount has felt a bit insufficient lately as my demands have increased.

After a couple of years of research I finally made up my mind and ordered a Skywatcher EQ8 Pro which arrived last Friday. Christmas comes early for some people ?

I believe this could be a good season if only the weather is merciful and the mount is what I hope it is…

2016-05-08 & 09

This was the day with a big D. We had planned for this event for quite a while and we started the “feast” the night before by shooting our first very own Jupiter in colour picture.

Both me and Jakob had taken the day off (Monday) to get as much time as needed to succeed with our project: To photograph the transit in 5 minutes steps throughout the entire day to finally make a film.
The weather was flawless with crystal clear sky and about 25 degrees in the air. So it became a superb day with a lot of productivity and a lot of laughter! Sitting behind a parasol and a curtain and staring at computer screens all day is everything you could ever ask for 🙂

And I must say that the result is somewhat of the coolest things we have ever accomplished!
The project resulted in two separate films… one shorter, and one longer version.

Jupiter w. Io & Europa

Mercury transit

Mercury transit

2016-03-11

When you get a really good night you feel that you accomplish something. How you get experience and improve your results. This was such a night.
We used three telescopes simultaneously to capture wide field as well as galaxies, and I must say I am quite happy with the results. I did one of my longest exposures of a galaxy ever of about 2h 40min 🙂
Jakob got a really nice result when he captured a myriad of galaxies in one of the widefields.

At the late night Jupiter rose over our heads and we didn´t hesitate to get a picture.

M101 – Pinwheel galaxy

Jupiter

NGC2903

M35, NGC2174, IC443

The myriad of galaxies

2016-01-16

Finally we got a night without clouds.
We new the moon would be up during the first part of the night so we took the opportunity to fotograph it. Shooting the moon is something we don´t usually care much about, and it is mostly just a annoying disturbance in the sky. This night however for the first time we made a serious try. Sadly the result was quite poor due to lines in the picture, and we realised to late this was a result of using to high gain in the software. This is going to be a learning to the next occasion.
We got a couple of deep sky pictures after the moon had gone down, but the IC59 & IC63 nebulae turned out to be very faint and hard to catch in detail despite long exposures.

IC59 & IC63

2015-12-12

Last weeks a lot of nights have been ruined by either the weather or the bright moon. After a visit to a Richard Dawkins event at Circus in Stockholm it was clear however that this was going to be a clear and dark night, so me and Jakob prepared ourselves. At the last minute however Jakob’s employer called and so he was forced to go to his office and I got a solo night beneath the stars. The night was clear and cold and everything worked out well.

The primary object for the night was M78 but I started with M31 while waiting for Orion to climb above the trees. I think the result was quite good even though I know it could be better with a longer exposure… already waiting for the next opportunity 😉

M31 – Andromeda Galaxy

M78

2015-10-16

We had planned for this night quite a while. And for once all turn out to be just perfect! A clear night sky and no moon 🙂 Me and Jakob went out as early as 7 pm and didn´t go back in until around 5 am. This turned out to be maybe the longest night we´ve ever experienced (or short… depending on how you choose to look at things ;-)) We had as much as three cameras shooting the sky at once. Despite the intense dew forming on the equipment the heaters managed to get the optics free and the result was a number beautiful of wide-field images, galaxies and nebulas! I wonder however how many more of these nights our astro computer will survive 😉

Elephant trunk nebula

M42 – Orion nebula

M33 – Triangulum galaxy

Astro computer