April 14

Today was a very big day - all day. First of all, I was scheduled to do a tour for a group of high school students at Palomar Observatory at 10:30 so I headed out from home about 7:45. There are two ways of driving there. One is the coast route that takes the I-5 down to Oceanside and then east on Rte. 76. That's the shortest route at 82 miles; the second route is the inland route - over the Coast Range, down the I-15, and then east on Rte. 76 but that's 100 miles. That's the route I took this morning to avoid he commuter traffic into San Diego that can get bad very quickly as you get into the Oceanside area. I got to Palomar about 10 AM and met Scott, the PR director, and two other docents. I was just in time to hear a news announcement from Cal Tech - Palomar actually imaged several planets outside the solar system - this was the first time an actual disk of a planet was imaged rather than appearing as just a pinpoint like a star. So much for being only the 15th biggest telescope in the world. I was able to use handouts of the announcement as part of the tour in the morning. Then the students got something of a rare treat. While the tour was in progress maintenance work was going on with the wheels that turn the dome being lubricated. To lubricate all the wheels, the dome must be turned as each set of wheels become accessible at a service door. The students were able to not only see the dome turn from inside but they were able to go up on the catwalks, both inside and outside, and get a ride on the dome. Its a very strange feeling if you are on the inside catwalk because the dome turns so effortlessly that at first you think that the telescope in the center is turning and not you and the dome. You feel no motion or vibration. After the tour was over at 12:30 we did a quick recap at the docent center. Then we got the occasional perk we anticipate for volunteering for this work. Scott showed us a small file cabinet that was full of historical photos of the Observatory. They were all extra copies that he found in an old storage room and he told us to go through them and help ourselves!

By 1 PM I was ready to head over to my observatory at Anza. This was sort of a test ride for the future when I hope to drive regularly between the two places instead of always the long drive from home. From one place to another the distance is twelve miles as the crow flies. However, the actual drive involves driving down Palomar (which is actually a long elevated ridge rather than a mountain peak) and around the east flank of the mountain past Lake Henshaw and back west. That 12 mile straight line is actually a 60 mile, one hour drive! But at least its through beautiful country. In fact, the area around Lake Henshaw is quite surprising. Its a large flat grassy plain centered around the lake about 3,000 feet above sea level. For twenty miles I did not see one car in either direction. Finally about 2 Pm I got to my observatory.

John had accomplished quite a bit last weekend. He built the walls and roof for his warm room in the observing area and got as far as covering it with tar paper. My main task was to correct an error I made last week. You are going to laugh about this. Take a look at the picture below that I had in last week's blog:

Notice anything wrong? How about the red cement mixer in the back behind the wall I built that has a door too small for the mixer to pass through? I had to saw through the two studs to the right of the pocket door to get the mixer out. The only problem was that John had to take his Sawzall home and I had to make the cuts with a hand saw. Then I had to splice the studs and crossbraces back in place. That didn't take too long so I was also able to put up about 2/3 of the dry wall by about 6 PM. Then a two hour ride home.

So I got a lot done: the tour at Palomar, very rare historical feebies, the first test ride between the two observatories, and more construction work at my observatory.

April 8 + Evening Planets

Last night I did a thirty minute talk at the Newport Beach Back Bay Center as part of three presentations by my club, the Orange County Astronomers. Although my talk, which was simply a display of astronomy images taken by club members was well received, the highlight of the evening as far as I was concerned was going outside after the first talk at about 7:40. The center is on the east side of Newport Bay so we had a great view across the bay of the western sky with just a band of sunset no more than ten degrees above the horizon. Just above this band was Venus, shining very brightly. It will be visible in the evening sky for several months. However, just the width of two fingers to the right and slightly lower was Mercury, which was much fainter - in fact almost 80 times fainter then Venus, and just barely visible to these aging eyes. If you would like to catch a view of Mercury - mostly for bragging rights because its really not that impressive - do it over the next couple of nights because Mercury moves very fast and will be moving apparently closer to the sun very quickly.

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Today was a good day at Anza for me. Leaving home at 6:30 I got there in about 1 3/4 hours and avoided most of the commuter traffic. When I arrived there was another member out there overnight but I didn't see him, just his equipment on his pad and his car. He probably had a good night and slept most of the day in the bunk house.

My goal today was to at least finish the wall we've been working on but first, a picture update from last week. Here is the west footing that we've been working on forever. Half of the wooden mold has been removed. The fact that several inches of the mold are buried at the bottom of the footing in concrete is the main problem. Cutting and removing the mold is backbreaking work.

Here is the observing area, specifically the northwest corner. That is where John will be shortly building his own warm room - probably this coming weekend. He built the roof module at home and trucked it out to the site. It is sitting on top off the main warm room roof.

This is John's temporary pier in the southwest corner of the observing area. He has notched the concrete so that the pier feet can sit in the same place for several months. This will be the location of his permanent pier.

We also removed the old permanent pier since it was inefficiently placed dead center of the observing area. You can see it sitting on the right side in front of the blue tarp. I will be mounting that permanently on my side of the observing area. The wire disaster we found and I described last blog is hidden under the red cone in the center and partially blocked by the ARD (Automatic Rain Deterrent) - or the plain old plastic bucket - over John's pier. Inside the main warm room, we have removed the old fluorescent tube light panels and have replaced them with four of these newer and more efficient panels. John got them for free when renovators at his workplace miscalculated the lighting fixtures and ordered too many. They were going to throw them out when John appropriated them.
Now for today's work. I needed to secure the two interior wall sections to the cinder blocks walls with masonry screws. Then I had to make a brace to span the space for the pocket door kit. Remember that the top sill for each wall section simply butted together. I had to use the brace to splice them together. Then I assembled the pocket door kit - according to the directions which specifically said NOT to remove the small wood spacers that kept the integrity of the door frame during shipment. The problem for me was that I saw two of them - there was a third that I mistook for a strengthening piece. Suffice it to say that later when the kit was assembled, inserted into the space for it in the wall, plumbed and squared, and secured permanently with nails and screws - I realized there was a third spacer that was never mentioned or shown on the directions. This had been causing me problems in truing up the frame that I resolved with several extra houris of unnecessary difficulty. I realized it was a spacer when I removed the two obvious ones and hung the door. When I pushed the door into the frame, the door edge missed being flush with the frame side by about an inch. It should have slid all the way in and hit a rubber bumper on the far inside if the frame. The third spacer was blocking it. Since there were three screws holding the spacer and their heads were now covered by the 2 X 4s of the wall, I had to chisel out the spacer and then cut the protruding screws with a Sawzall. At that point I decided to call it a day. One unexpectedly favorable surprise saved us some work. We had anticipated that we would have to brace the middle of the wall against the rafters to keep it from moving but there is so much strength in the assembly that we can skip that step. Here is a picture of the finally completed wall in the main warm room:

Next week I will try to find a week day to complete the dry wall and start hanging the new ceiling panels. We're hoping to have an estimate on the new roof from Gary by then.

April 4 + Easter Earthquake

Very interesting weekend!



First of all, nobody was injured nor was there any damage from the Easter quake. I'll add more after I update the observatory.



Yesterday both John and I worked at the observatory plus we had a meeting with the club contractor who just completed the other observatories that I've mentioned and shown photos of previously. No pics today - I'll have some next weekend after some more time at the observatory.



We met with Gary, the club contractor, at the observatory yesterday because we are getting a bit tired that our astronomy hobby has been transformed into a building contractor business with the completion seemingly not getting any closer. We are actually almost finished with all but two things: our telescope piers and the roof. We have almost completed all the electrical wiring including the installation of new ceiling lights in the warm room, almost completing the new wall and pocket door. We are half finished with removing the wood molds on our footings that we struggled with over the winter. Unfortunately they will not simply slide up and out of the hole, leaving behind the cement footings. What happened is that wet cement oozed under the forms and encased about three inches of the wood form in concrete. We have had to take a sawzall, squeeze it into the excavated holes, and try to saw thru the forms at an angle. Unexpectedly hard work half done. Then we finally removed the single telescope pier that's in the center of the observing area. I will be re-locating it several feet to one side for my use but we had a surprise, We expected to have one conduit coming up out of the slab to power the telescope. There were three conduits with wires coming out and simply twisted together and a nut slipped over each one - it really should have had a junction box but we finally figured out why three conduits - one came from the main circuit box as expected but the other two conduits run to the two GFI outlets on the outside of the building. Just some more unexpected electrical wring to do.

We met with Gary to see if we can have him help with the roof. After reviewing our autocad drawings and discussing his schedule versus our needs and finances, we will be getting an estimate from him with ten days. He will price it two ways: one - he will complete the entire roof assembly including all of the rail and support work on top of the walls, and two, we will complete the track and support system and Gary will quote only on the roof itself. In both cases, John and I will complete the roof motor mechanism. Hopefully, Gary will be reasonable time-wise (completion by late June) and price-wise (he usually makes nothing on club members and if he under estimates the job, he eats the difference). Meanwhile John and I will continue with the projects we have already initiated, Fortunately, despite the lack of a roof and no permanent piers, the observatory is usable.

You probably have heard about the big quake across the border in Mexico today. Phillis and I were at a friend's house in Huntington Beach sitting down for Easter dinner on his patio when it hit. There were eight of us sitting by the pool when I started to feel a slight side to side motion, minor enough to think it was just my balance. I asked Phil if she felt ti and then it got stronger and everyone felt it. Every quake feels different and this was the most different. It lasted av bout 45 seconds and the motion was a back and forth motion that got fairly strong and then tailed off and then another set of motion with a different period and less strong. When it was over I said it was at least a 7.0 at least a hundred miles away. Just like in the movie "Volcano" - all Californians get into the quick guess before they hear official word. Right now it was a 7.2 almost 140 miles away. This was the first reasonable quake we experienced when it wasn't night and we were outdoors. The pool water sloshed over onto the patio and lost a couple inches of water. It was really cool watching the utility poles swinging back and forth one at a time as each quake wave came thru. I thought the wires were going to snap because they would lose tension and then get very taut every few seconds.

The funny thing was people's reactions. Six of us have felt a number of fairly strong earthquakes so once it was over, talk switched over to talking about past quakes. The two visitors from North Carolina were on the verge of panicking unit they saw how calm we all were. The quake talk went on for about ten minutes and then switched back to other things. When we went inside the TV had a continuous bulletin about the quake but we knew it would be hours before anyone knew anything more than how strong was the quake and where was the epicenter. The visitors were glued to the TV. I was very interested to hear one of the old timers recall when he was ten years old and went thru the Long Beach quake - in 1933!

That's about it until next week.