March 11

Today was a good day at the observatory. As promised some time ago, here are the pics to catch up on the work I've written about. First a pretty picture:This was taken looking west from near where the paved road gives way to the dirt road five miles from the observatory. The snow capped peak is Mt. San Jacinto. Just beyond and 7,000 feet below its peak lies Palm Springs at sea level. People normally see this mountain in the background of the Palm Springs postcards.

Most of the dirt road has been repaired since the last rains two weeks ago except for the final approach to our gate, which actually is considerably worse for some reason.

This rut is almost a foot deep and runs all he way to our gate, splitting along the way. The best way to cross this is to try and pass over it at a 90 degree angle - as long as the sides don't collapse!

Here's an axle buster!

Now for the catch-up pics. Here is the outside view with the new stains and weeping from the rain:

East wall:

South wall:

The walls will have to be power washed again prior to painting in a few weeks.

Here is the new door between the warm room and the observing area:

Its been keeping the rain out of the warm room.

Below is where we replaced the window between the warm room and observing area. This will be covered in a few weeks by the wall from John's warm room.Below is the west footing for the north rail support column, still in its form and not yet back filled:

Below is the warm room as of today. The old ceiling tiles have been removed. The new tiles are in cases on the left. The white squares piled in the back middle are the new lights that will replace the old fluorescent lights. There will still be both white and red lights on different on/off switches. The red lights are used at night to maintain your night vision.
Against the back wall are 4 X 4s of dry wall. I had to cut them down from 4 X 8s in the Lowe's parking lot to get them in my van. I provided some fine amusement for Lowe's customers that day. The new stud wall in the middle was built today. I made it into two separate sections as can be seen by the fact that the top sill are in two pieces. That was for two reasons: 1 - I was here alone today and would not have been able to lift and position a wall of that size myself; 2 - The top sill would have been 12 feet long - too long for my van. I did manage to position the two sections and bolt them to the cement slab floor. The empty center part of the wall is the roughed out area for the pocket door and its frame, both of which are leaning against the right hand wall beyond the new stud wall.

By next week John will have completed most of the new wiring and I will have completed the new wall. John will also start on his warm room in the current observing area. Within the next month my new camera will arrive and I will start the shake down on my new system. That will get me to the point of coming out for a long weekend where I can work on the observatory, take images and photometry at night, and do afternoon tours at Palomar Observatory, only forty minutes away.

Speaking of which, I was at Palomar last weekend and was snowed on for the first time in California. I got a chance to climb inside part of the telescope. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, here is a standard picture of the Hale telescope at Palomar:

Just a quick explanation. The steel truss work pointing to the one o'clock position is actually what you would call the telescope tube. The mirror is almost 16 1/2 feet in diameter. Now look at the solid tube pointing at the 10 o'clock position in the foreground. It is hollow and I was able to climb inside of it last week. Here is my picture just inside the round entry portal:

I think this is enough for today. Since we are starting a new season at Palomar and I'm involved there with researching the observatory history and working on a telescope program in addition to conducting tours, I can provide a lot of interesting behind the scenes stories. Please let me know if you would like me to write about Palomar in addition to my observatory.

March 4

This will be short. If you've had a bad day, read on - you may feel better since I probably had a worse day then you. If you've had a good day, skip this so I don't ruin the rest of your day. Don't worry, I don't have the new pictures I promised in the last post. That will wait till next week.

Today's trip to Anza had been delayed repeatedly over the last two weeks, mostly due to weather. I had the van pretty loaded up for today's trip: 18 2"x4"s, five pieces of 4'X8' sheet rock, a pocket door frame, a pocket door, 3 cases of ceiling tiles, plus all the tools I needed. All of this was to divide the warm room into a control area/TV room and a separate sleeping area and to replace the old ceiling tiles I ripped down ages ago.

I had some trepidation because I heard the dirt road to the site had taken some hits with the last rains. Under normal conditions the van barely has enough clearance; today it was even less with the load I had.

The road was eroded in a few places but had been repaired better than before in others. Despite the improved areas, the normal ten minute dirt road ride took over 30 minutes. Here's a pic of the road with one of the deeper eroded ruts:

The final approach to our site was in the worst shape. Some of those ruts are over a foot deep. The entrance to our site is just past the fence on the right.

The weather had changed quite a bit from the coast - from warm and sunny to cool, cloudy, and damp. A good thing was that even though it had rained quite a bit recently, the warm room was dry as a result of the new door and weep holes we drilled several weeks ago.

I had everything unloaded and in the observatory by 9:30. I should have easily been able to frame out the wall and door, put up the sheet rock, and hung the ceiling tiles by dinner time - not to be. The gods needed to be amused.

I opened up the pocket door kit to start to review the assembly directions. I couldn't find the bag of hardware for the assembly. The packing box had not been tampered with but there was no bag in the van or the observatory. I was stuck before I could do anything. The nearest Lowes was over 35 miles away; the one that I bought it at was over 90. That pretty much killed any hope of construction for the day. I resigned myself to rectifying the problem and trying again next week.

I got home by noon, got my Lowes receipt and headed to the store. The manager became very understanding once everyone in the store could hear of my problem and the wasted day. He reimbursed me $50 of the $60 cost of the door. So I made $50 for half a day's work minus the gas.

I'll try again next week and will hopefully have a happier story to tell.