November 5, 2010

I know, its been a while since the last post - almost 3 months! Construction has slowed down for several reasons: I had a busy schedule with my docent volunteer work at Palomar Observatory, our unseasonably heavy rains over the last several weeks have made the dirt road access to the observatory a bit more hazardous than my car can handle (about 3 inches over the past month but ten times the average), plus John has used up all his vacation time for the year. That's the real bottleneck because we are at the stage that a lot of steel fabrication work is necessary and that is John's forte. Nevertheless, work has advanced far enough to justify another blog.

I drove out to the site this past Friday for the day with my new helper - my daughter Kristin, who just moved to Orange county with her husband in mid-October. John arrived about noon but he was staying for the weekend. Together we completed more than we had planned for the day. Fall is a great time in the desert - bright sun, temps near 80, very low humidity, light breezes.


Kristin and I got there about 9 AM as usual and, after touring her around the whole 17 acre site, including the bunk house for the showers and bathroom, I put her to work. She jumped right in and painted the last interior wall to the warm room area:

She finished that up pretty quickly and then she primed the interior walls of the observing area. Since the cinder blocks were so dry from being exposed here so long, it will need a second coat, just like the exterior walls will.

Kristin had all the painting done by the time we broke for lunch.


While she painted I excavated outside around the east rail support column. I thought we were finished with that work but we forgot one thing: we need to use a 40 amp welder and do a number of welds at the top of the rail. For that, we need about a five foot high temporary platform for the equipment and welder when we get to that point. John had previously assembled the platform but we needed about five feet of additional space excavated from the hill side around the rail support columns. I completed the west side excavation back in August and John started the east side a couple of weeks ago. My job was to finish that off. I spent most of the day moving 11 wheel barrels of stuff from that point to the head of our driveway about 30 yards away. The fun part - right! - was digging out a large chaparral bush also. While digging I hit a large underground burrow - fortunately, it was empty.


Here I am fighting with the chaparral bush. John has been doing a lot of steel fabrication over the last couple of months. Here is some of the work he has done:

Top of the west wall showing 3 steel pieces that are anchored thru the wall with steel bolts. They will position the horizontal steel beams that will support the rails.

This is a very complicated piece:


This is the corner brace for the southwest corner. What is not visible are the two vertical tabs extending down the outside just like the two visible on the inside. Again, steel bolts extend thru the cinder block wall and the vertical tabs. This picture is 180 degrees from the picture above so you can see there are four positional pieces on the west cinder block wall.

We ended up the day by closely positioning two of the horizontal support rails. These are 18 foot sections of 2 X 6 steel tubing. It doesn't look like a big deal but when you have to squat on the edge of a roof and slide almost 300 pounds of steel into position, it gets a bit tiring very quickly.

This is the west support rail - almost in position. In this shot it needs to slide out a total of four feet beyond the rail support post. It also needs to be laid horizontally rather than vertically. The other end rests on one of the positional supports from the west wall previously pictured above. We were surprised at how little give there is on the middle of the rail, despite not having a support column in place. Despite the fact that this rail will be equally sharing a 4,000 pound roof, we decided it only needs one additional support column above the current warm roof, rather than the two we had originally planned.

That was pretty much everything we got done. Finally here is a shot of John and I standing in the newly excavated area, grinning broadly since we know for sure that all of the excavating is finally complete. Next to us to the left in the shade is the temporary platform that John constructed.

Now a bit of biology. Near the observatory we found a small skull, probably from a rodent. What puzzles us though are the two long fangs that seem to be much larger than the rest of the cranium. If anyone can identify this, please let me know - maybe a snake?
Over the next couple of weeks I hope to complete all of the second coat primer painting in the observatory area and around the exterior of the building. John will continue with the remaining steel fabrication before we have our friend come in with the 40 amp welder for the heavy duty welding.


Next blog I'll show my new deep sky imaging setup, explain what it took to assemble it, and talk about how it works.

August 7 - 9

I headed out to the observatory Friday morning with plans to be back home no later than Sunday. The plans included more observatory construction work with John and enjoying the club Star Party on Saturday night.

The unseasonably cool weather continued through the entire weekend with daytime highs near 90 when 105 to 115 is the norm for August. The bright blue summer sky continued with a light breeze all weekend.

My work goal for Friday continued in support of the roof raising in several weeks. The rail supports in the hillside beyond the north wall were completed several weeks ago but. in anticipation of John;s friend's higher powered welding work coming up, I needed to excavate out the hills side for four feet on either side of each support as well as the entire hillside for another feet beyond the supports. I spent most of the day until dinner time using a jack hammer to break up a lot more granite and moving about 20 to 25 wheel barrels of rock and soil about 25 yards to near the head of our driveway. That was enough to partially fill in the gully that we would fall into with just a small mistake backing out of the driveway. By sunset there were about a dozen people on site setting up their equipment but the sunset was spectacular and was the kickoff to two nights of osberving that I would call magical. The air was so clear that after the sun went down the western sky went from deep blue right through all the rainbow colors, including a bluish green and then a strong green, before turning red near the horizon.

Once it was full night the sky was incredible. The Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon and everywhere you looked there were stars. The dark galactic clouds that split the summer Milky Way were not only intense but varied in their intensity - a sight that's rarely seen. What made the night so intense was the heavy marine layer that blanketed all the coastal areas. That keeps all the artificial lighting beneath the clouds and the clouds beneath us. The layer was almost 4,000 feet which is unusually thick but the top still over 500 feet below us. A little after 10 PM there was a brilliant fireball overhead, crossing almost half the sky. It was so bright that it cast faint shadows across the ground and the trail lasted for several seconds - wow! As if that wasn't enough, far to the east we could see sheet lightning flashes in a cloudless sky. We found out alter that the origin was thunderstorms around Quartzite, Arizona - that's right - Arizona! Those storms were over 150 miles from us and yet the lightning must have been reflected off something in the upper atmosphere between the storms and us. The flashes were not very bright and stayed low to the horizon. If you have ever seen the old war movies where they showed artillery barrages over the horizon and the flashes that they made, that was what we saw. They lasted till well after I went to sleep about 1 AM. John was imaging all night but he was concerned that the lightning flashes, even faint n and low in the sky, may have interfered with his imaging. He'll know early in the week when he starts processing them at home.

Saturday was a good work day as well as some interesting nature stuff. While John continued on his finishing touches on his observing room, I installed all of the spot lights in the ceiling panels in my control room and our common room. I located four spots with a dimmer switch above my control desk area plus another red spot light just inside our entry door. The red light will be on at night to give enough illumination so that people entering the observatory will see enough not to trip but not ruin their night vision at the same time. Many people have heard of night vision but very few people have actually experienced it. It is simply the adjustment of your eyes dilating to see better at night. That is not something that is achieved by standing in a suburban back yard for a few minutes - your eyes reach their maximum dilation, or optimum night vision, after about thirty minutes in total darkness. I have had many guests come out to the observatory, look at the sky for a few minutes, and think they have seen everything. Then, over the next thirty minutes or so, they ooh and aah a lot more as they begin to see more and more fainter objects.

Now for the nature part. I saw my first tarantula in the wild on the path from the observatory to the bunkhouse. It was just ambling along, sharing the path with me. Including its legs it was about the size of my open hand. To top that off, a bit later in the afternoon as several of us were talking outside the observatory, a very large flying insect buzzed us before moving on. It was almost three inches long and was very strongly black in the front and orange on the back half. I never saw anything like that before but the desert vets said it was a tarantula hawk. Its a beetle that is on of the few living things that preys on tarantulas - parasitic wasp - they actually attack a tarantula in its hole, temporarily immobilizes it , then lays eggs in its living body, where they feed until they hatch. Then we saw a longhorn beetle, about 2 inches long with a pair of feelers as long as its body that protrude straight out of its head perpendicular to its body. That was the nature activity for the weekend. Saturday night was the monthly club star party and, by night fall, there were at least thirty people on site with their telescopes. Since I still don't have my stuff on site and John was prepping his equipment for more imaging, I decided to make the rounds socialize. Its always fun to see who has what equipment, what's new, and what kind of projects beyond sightseeing that others may be doing. I ran into an old friend named Dan who has a pad on the other side of the site and I haven't seen him in almost a year. He proudly showed me his new telescope - a 22 inch home-made Dobsonian. I know that probably doesn't mean anything to most of you. This is a telescope that has a mirror, not a lens, which is twenty-two inches across. That size mirror allows you to see some very faint objects, roughly several million times fainter than the naked eye. The home-made part means that Dan has made the entire telescope himself except for the optics. Dobsonian is the type of mount he uses and is named after a Trappist monk who invented this very simple type of mount over fifty years ago. This mount has made large telescopes for visual observing very inexpensive and available to all serious amateurs. Thirty years ago the largest mirror telescope you could find was about 8 inches; today 16 inches is considered on the small size. Dan's entire telescope weighs 80 pounds, is easily assembled, transports very easily, and is snap to operate. The rest of the night was a repeat of Friday night - down to the sheet lightning on the eastern horizon and a bright fireball overhead. The fireballs from both nights were unusual enough that I filed a Fireball Report on each one with the International Meteor Organisation, a world wide group dedicated to gathering data on meteors and expanding our scientific understanding of them.

Sunday dawned identically to the last two days. John laid down indoor/outdoor carpeting in his control room; I finished all the additional electrical conduits and outlets in my bunk room and the control/common room.

This was quite an exciting weekend with us achieving all of our construction goals as well as having a pair of extraordinary astronomy nights. This Thursday night, the Perseid Meteor Shower peaks and I am trying to make plans to be at the observatory and conduct a night's worht of meteor counts that I can submit to several pro/am groups.

Sorry there were no pictures this time around but photos will be much more interesting once we start on the rail system.

July 22, 2010 - Roof + Palomar

Since I've been writing this blog for just over a year you can understand why I'm now including the year in the title.

Last post I mentioned about the roof sections being completed off site but I had no pictures at that time. My friend Gary has sent them to me so here they are.

These are the frames for the two roof sections:

Both roof frames are stacked in Gary's driveway - yes, that is an orange grove in the background. Each frame is almost 18 feet long. Here is a closer picture from a different angle:The roll-off roof has side walls also, each 18 inches tall:The remaining construction will be done on our site when we complete the rail system over the next month. The truss supports will be individually welded in place as well as the wheels attached to the side wall at that time. The sheet metal surface will be attached once the frame is completed. This method of construction has several advantages. Its easier for Gary to transport his sections to our site in several pieces; completing the frame on site will allow us to correct any possible measurement inaccuracies during assembly before they become fatal; and, assembling it in smaller sections eliminate the need for a crane and will be done by a work crew.

John and I are taking a break from the observatory for the next week. He is completing a kitchen reconstruction and I'm doing volunteer work at Palomar Observatory. Actually, I started last week with the first of three Fridays in a row. Normally we have public tours on weekends; we frequently conduct private tours for groups at any time we have the docents available. For these three Fridays we are doing private tours for a local Boy Scout summer camp. Last Friday my fellow docent and I had a blast. The tours typically last for one hour but the scouts were so receptive that we went on for almost two hours (something we can't do on weekends because of the tight time schedule). The Scouts got a kick out of being able to watch the techncians charging an instrument with liquid nitrogen for that night's work. What made this tour especially rewarding is that all of the scouts - about 20 - have just completed their astronomy merit badges and they are all learning disabled or autistic. Their questions and interest level went far beyond the typical public tour. Even though it was only one tour for the day, it was worth the four hour round trip.

Tomorrow morning I'll be driving to Palomar again but when I finish in the early afternoon I will drive sixty miles around the east end of Palomar Mountain to my observatory (actually only twelve miles if I could fly) and do some electrical work.

June 18 - July 9

This blog is a bit different then the others because it covers over three weeks of work.

I met John at Anza by 9 AM on Friday, 6/18. Once again he came out the evening before and imaged all night - in fact the nights were so nice last weekend that he imaged all night from Thursday thru Sunday - that's almost 24 hours of imaging. Because of the more variable weather back East, many imagers there may take up to an entire year to get that much imaging time. That's why we're out in the high desert.

Even the daytime weather was perfect every weekend day, strong sunshine, temp in the low 80s, very low humidity, light breeze. Our plan for the weekend was to work on the vital steel sections for the rail support system. They are the smaller, more intricate sections that need to be positioned very precisely. With that done, we will be ready for John's friend later in July with the high energy welder for the main rail sections.

The first piece to be fabricated was four feet long with a long outside plate and a shorter inside plate.

This is to be placed on the top of the east wall precisely where the flat top of the observing wall gives way to the sloping shingle roof of the warm room area. This piece needs to be perfectly level because that is where the rail begins to be suspended over the shingle roof and it must be perfectly level with the flat top of the observing area wall and the top of the rail upright. We also made a hole in the shingle roof to have access to the inside wall to attach the inner plate flange. In the image below, we have properly positioned the plate and John is precisely leveling it. Once it was leveled, John drilled the two bolt holes to secure the plate. John's sense of position is amazing. We had previously measured and drilled four bolt holes, two in each side plate. By eye, he was able to drill completely through the cement-filled cinder block and come through the drilled bolt hole on the other side precisely.

We repeated the same procedure on the west wall. That was a bit more difficult because it partly overlapped where John's warm room wall rose above the cinder block wall but that was successful.

Next we went back to the cement footings for the rail supports that we finally back filled the other week. We removed the wooden square on top of each footing that had originally held the four bolts in place. We then fabricated a steel plate to take its place and that would also be the base of the rail support. We hoped to use the chop saw to cut the squares but it did poorly. For some reason it had cut the steel tubes much more easily the other week. We ended up using the Sawzall with a steel cutting blade and that worked well. Then we used a drill press to bore four holes in each plate. When completed we placed them on the footings and they fit perfectly.

We also repeated some measurements now that we have some more steel fabricated. We needed to measure the height for the upright from the footing to where the bottom rail support will be extending from the roof. We had planned on up to a 2 inch shortfall with the upright compared to the actual length - it was 1 3/4 inch. That shortfall is to be accounted for by the bottom plate and its adjusted height above the cement footing.

Once we made that measurement we actually placed the upright in position to confirm the measurement:
Over the next two weeks John worked on strengthening the rail uprights with small side flanges and even bolted the uprights in place. See picture below.

He also fabricated the crosspiece of two parallel bars to secure the two uprights together.
The double bar crosspiece is laying on the ground in this picture. It is 18 feet long and weighs about 300 pounds.

On July 9 I met John at the observatory early for a day of work for me but John, once again, was staying until Sunday to complete more of his control room and possibly the diagonal braces for the rail uprights. The day was nice but the hottest so far - nothing like last year at this time fortunately. The day was partly cloudy, low humidity, and temps in the mid-90s but a nice breeze. One of those days that requires lots of constant drinking water - up to a pint every 30 to 60 minutes.

The first thing we did was raise the double bar to the top of the uprights. The piece weighed close to 300 pounds and is 18 feet long and needed to be raised up almost ten feet. Two of us weren't enough but we were lucky that another member was camped nearby. The three of us took about 30 minutes to raise it in position. We easily raised one end and rested it on the top of the east upright. The double bar fit snugly to either side of the upright.
This is the west upright after the double bar was put in place and clamped. You can see two L-brackets welded to the upright. The inside one is supporting the double bar; the outside one will be supporting a 2 X 8 steel beam on edge and is flush with the upright side. The rail will also extend about five feet beyond the upright.

For the second one, we had to raise the west end to the top of the west upright. To do that we had to hang a bit over the east upright for the proper vertical swing room. Once two of us lifted the west end and held it in a rough position about 4 inches short of the L-bracket on the upright, John started to hammer the east end to nudge it into place. One bar on the west end of the double bar however, had bent inward slightly as a result of the welding done previously. While we continued to hold it in position John attached a reverse clamp to pry the end open slightly, no more than 1/4 inch. Once that was done John continued the hammering and the double bar nudged into position easily. That was a tough ten minutes because two of us had to hold the 300 pound double bar over our heads at almost ten feet until it rested on the L-bracket. Once properly positioned, we secured it with clamps for the next week or two until John's friend comes out with a more powerful welding machine than we currently have.

The two rail uprights and the double bar crosspiece in place with clamps temproarily from the northeast. Palomar Mountain is the blue ridge beyond the osbervatory roof at the horizon.

The uprights and double bar from the north (Note that the Quikrete has not been buried at this point.)

That was the toughest part of the day.

We also worked in my control room. We made some space by removing the 18 sixty pound bags of Quikrete that had been stored there on cinder blocks since last fall. The Quikrete picked up moisture over the winter and turned into solid blocks that we could no longer use. We thought about how to get rid of them and decided to bury them on the hillside above the north wall. We dug a long trench and placed them two high.

Then we back filled the dirt over the Quikrete as well as some dirt from excavating more of the north hillside.The disturbed area where the Quikrete is buried is about a foot higher than the surroundign ground. It is to help to guide any rain runoff from the slope above us away from the observatory and into a swale we dug by the far bushes.

Then we put paneling on the wall facing the control room.

Finally, we ended the day by attaching a handrail by the stairs going up to the observing area and tightening up the treads we built over the winter.Over the next month we plan on completing the rail system on the roof. We had good news from our friend Gary who is building the roof sections off site. He has completed fabricating all the roof sections and is waiting for us to complete the rail system to deliver the sections and assemble them. I should have some pics of these sections in a few days.

June 11 - 13

John and I spent two full days working on the observatory this past weekend plus we had the help of two of John's friends on Saturday to get some of the big steel pieces for the rail system up onto the roof.

I showed up late Friday afternoon, not expecting to get anything done that day but to be able to start almost at sunrise on Saturday. John came out the night before with the intention of imaging but he got clouded out. As it turned out Friday night got clouded out too and by 9 PM we were totally fogged in. It was so dark that if you stepped outside and took only a couple of steps and turned around, you could not see the observatory. A white door light less than fifty feet away did not even make a pale glow - it was completely invisible. We were fortunate because we recently added some things to the place to make it more comfortable. We now have a 36 inch flat screen TV (temporarily until I get a deal on a 46 inch one), a BlueRay player,and a microwave. So we ate popcorn, drank beer, and watched "When Worlds Collide" (one of the few good sci-fi movies from the '50s - and in color) then "2012" before we packed it in. I was able to bunk out in my room which is almost finished, and John slept in his warm room on the observing deck (which is almost completed also). At sunrise the cloud deck was less than several hundred feet up and quite thick, plus it was damp and only in the 50s. As is typical in the desert, within an hour of sunrise the clouds burned off, the sky was blue, the humidity dropped like a stone, but the temps stayed in the mid-70s all day with a light breeze.

Since we had two helpers showing up around 10 AM we were able to work on multiple projects at the same time. John double checked his autocad drawings for the rail and post support measurements while I went to work on what was left of the wood mold on the footings. If you remember, we struggled with that during the winter and decided to back off until the weather got warmer. Here's the east footing and the remaining wood mold:
I was pleasantly surprised because the wood had dried out so much over the winter that I was able to cut it easily and then break it out of the concrete with a sledge hammer. What I thought was going to be a several hour job turned out to be about thirty minutes. When I got the mold off the east pier I found that we had a neighbor:

The only reason I got such a close shot of him was because it was still pretty cool out and his body temperature was down so he could hardly move. Here's a shot of the north side with both footings completed and back filled.
I've just gone to live time now - at 9:26 PM on Monday evening as I'm writing this, we just had an earthquake - house gently swayed for about 15 seconds, pool water is rocking back and forth and almost overflowing - USGS just reported a 5.7 magnitude quake near the Mexican border, 118 miles south-southeast of here.

Okay, back to the important stuff. If your remember from last summer's blogs, I spent a lot of time sanding and priming the steel beams that we inherited from the former owners and were half buried for twenty years. We're finally starting to use them for the rail system. They're in terrific shape but many of the ends are just off being square. Here's a shot of John using a chop saw to even off the edge of one of the pieces that will be the wall cap and the base of the rail: That particular piece is a 2 X 6 about nineteen feet long and weighs around 200 pounds. The four of us managed to lift it and one for the other side up onto the roof. Once it was up on the roof and precisely positioned, we closely adjusted its level and extended it beyond the north roof line and over the west footing. John then hung a line down to where the post will attach to the top of the footing. The picture below shows John and his friend Roger taking some measurements. Derek is on the roof.
The measurement indicated that we were within 1/8 inch of our planned height. The other footing showed the same small difference. We were able to cut our lone 2 X 8 into the right lengths for both posts. Here's John cutting the 2 X 8:
One of the things that we have to do also that sounds minor but takes time is beveling the edges of the steel. That is to allow more contact area for when we butt the beam ends and have to weld them together. In the photo below, both posts are cut and stacked and you can see bright steel on their edges from the bevel grinding that we did. Actual measurement and cutting of the two rail posts were the major goals for the weekend. This gives John the information he needs to cut additional small steel plates and supports over the following, or current, week at home. Here is a picture from a different angle of the rails put in place for the post measurement: While these measurements were going on I was on the observing deck doing the very last of the demolition. We had left the 2 X 6 wood caps on the east and south walls through the winter and now they had to be removed to be able to place the rail system. They were originally bolted to the top of the cinder block wall with the nuts recessed into the 2 X 6. We couldn't figure how they originally screwed the nuts onto the bolts because there was virtually no room to get a socket wrench around the nut. I had to chisel some of the wood away to get enough room to work with. The picture below shows the observing roof area from last summer with all of the steel and wood support we had to remove. Compare that to the following picture taken last Saturday from a soemwhat different angle. You can see that the demo has been completed down to the cinder blocks. The bolts sticking up out of the wall need to be cut and then that wall is ready for the rail. This is also a good picture to show the observing area that I will be using. My area is a bit more than 9 feet wide and 17 1/2 feet long. The permanent pier for my telescope will eventually be about where the red vacuum cleaner is sited.

We had another adventure in desert biology. We took a break about 1 PM for lunch and sat around the front door of the observatory in front of my car. As we were eating, a five foot king snake slithered quickly across our driveway under the trunk of my car - no more than fifteen feet away. I was surprised at how fast it moved - I would not have been able to outrun it. Fortunately for us, the king snake leaves peopel alone and is immune to rattlesnake venom and loves to kill and eat them.

That pretty much wrapped up what we did on Saturday. We showered and went into town for dinner. By the time we got back we were getting pretty achy and tired but John went ahead and set up his equipment and automated it to image all night. I have a problem with working all day and then imaging all night so I just enjoyed the night sky for a while. It was a beautiful night with the summer Milky Way very bright and even some bright gas nebulae visible as well as the dark rift running down the center of the Milky Way. After a while I headed in and watched another '50s sci-fi classic - "Them" - yup, the one with the giant ants - and then went to sleep.

We did get interrupted with an earthquake at about 9 PM - a 4.9 twenty miles to our southeast. Things have gotten pretty active over the last year.

Sunday we got more done but we certainly were not at the pace of the previous day. We mostly policed the area around the observatory. The steel beams were stacked neatly on the south side and the weeds trimmed as shown: Also, we worked on the demo pile on the west side. Recently the town dump changed one of its rules - all wood has to be cut to less than five foot lengths so I spent an hour or so doing that:
After it all got cut and stacked it didn't look so big anymore. Of course we have already made several trips to the dump over the winter plus we would carry some of the small stuff home and dispose of it. This weekend I brought home all of the old hanging ceiling panels. Finally I'll end this blog with the last picture from the weekend - me posing at the north end of the observatory. San Diego is about eighty miles beyond the nearby ridge.

May 18 - 21 plus Palomar

Today's blog will be about the longest thus far so you might want to clear some time, curl up with a cup of coffee or tea, and get set for a fun read.

We're beginning our final push toward completing the observatory. John left for the observatory on May 14 for eight days; I went to the observatory on Tuesday, May 18. When I arrived the weather was miserable: low clouds, damp, and drizzle. Fortunately the rest of the week proved to be 70ish, dry, and light breezes. The optimal plan was to get as much work completed as possible so that by week's end the only major work remaining would be the rail system and the roll-off roof.

I had some back tracking to do. If you remember from the posts from last fall I power washed the outside of the observatory in anticipation of painting it with primer but the colder winter weather came early. (Notice I qualified the weather description with "colder" so as not to insult you Northeasters who tolerate REALLY cold weather. I'm only talking about temps down into the 30s at the lowest - only too cold for outdoor painting.) As a result, the winter rains caused the untreated cinder blocks to weep again as shown below.

Since our rainy season is done and virtually no rain will fall before August when the Arizona monsoon occasionally backs up into our area with thunder storms, I decided it was time to start on the outside, even though the roll off roof is not yet built. Here is a view of the south side of the observatory from a bit down the hill prior to power washing on Wednesday.


This particular spot from where this picture was taken has some recent notoriety. Last Saturday a four foot diamond back rattler was found and disposed of at this spot. This seems to be a harbinger of some change of wild life recently in our area. For the nine years I've been coming to this site through last summer, no rattle snakes had been found. Last summer, a member's Labrador retriever was bitten by a rattler; fortunately he survived thanks to some very quick emergency treatment. Now there was the one last Saturday. Then on Wednesday evening we saw a three foot rattler on a dirt road about 200 yards from our property gate. Three rattlesnake sightings in one year and none for the previous nine years seems to be saying something. Another change is a sort of symbiotic relationship between coyotes and desert hares. Desert hares are Eastern rabbits on steroids. They are typically the size of a very large cat and are the primary food source of coyotes. Suddenly this spring we are overrun with hares. They are virtually unafraid of people, roaming to within five feet of people while rooting. Why so many hares? There are hardly any coyotes. Typically at night you can hear literally dozens of coyotes howling once one starts up. This spring we've only been hearing a few at a time. Our guess is that the cause is the increase in permanent human habitation in the valley from two houses within eyesight several years ago to about six now. We're getting too settled for the coyotes in our opinion. The fourth change is the appearance of a rodent called the kangaroo rat. Although native to California and our desert habitat, we have never seen any at all in our valley. There are now at least half a dozen families living on our property. A different type of lizard has also appeared. The normal population are small speckled ones about 4 to 5 inches long. The ones who just moved in are dark and almost a foot long but much more shy the the smaller ones. That's more than enough desert biology for now.

On Wednesday I power washed the outside as planned. Here's a shot of me having fun.
This was the easy part. The hard part is the same as last fall: I had to lay out four hundred and fifty feet of water hose up the hill to the nearest tap at the club observatory. To give a visual of that distance take a look at the picture below which is serving a dual purpose.

This was taken from the top of the hill by the water tap. Our observatory is on the left of the picture. The second purpose of this picture is in the distance. On the horizon beyond the ridge line is a darkish sky layer. That view is looking west toward the LA Basin but that is not smog. It is our infamous "marine layer". It is a deep, dense fog bank that hovers permanently over the California Current. The Current is a Gulf Stream-like ocean flow but coming down from Alaska and keeps the coastal water cold all year long - usually in the 60s. It helps to moderate the air temperature along the coast. The marine layer can be blown hundreds of miles off shore or up to a hundred miles inland. Its advantageous to us amateur astronomers when it rolls in at sunset. Under the best conditions, the marine layer covers the coastal cities and inland valleys up to 3,000 to 4,000 feet altitude, blocking all the artificial light and keeping the night sky where our observatory is located at 4,500 feet as dark as possible.

After power washing the outside walls on Wednesday, I waited until Thursday afternoon to begin painting to give the blocks enough time to full dry out. Meanwhile there was plenty of time to do other work. On Tuesday I finished spackling the inside wall that separates Phillis's room from my control room. I had hoped to get the wall painted but ran out of time this go round.
Phillis' room and my control room

However, I also completed installing the ceiling panels in Phillis' room as well as most of my control room. I would have finished my control room ceiling except we made some last minute electric changes and had to run some additional conduit in the ceiling which we were able to complete. In the picture above, you can see through the pocket doorway into Phillis' room which is 7 feet by 11 feet, not very large but fine to hang out in at night with white light. Also, except for when Phillis is sleeping there, the door will be open to my control room which is 11 feet by 11 feet. At the very top of the picture you can see part of one of the ceiling lights. There are two in Phillis' room, two in my control room, and two in John's control room (which I'll get to shortly). We were very fortunate with light fixtures because they normally cost $400 each but John's work re-designed their offices and tossed out the light fixtures which we promptly appropriated.

By Friday noon I had finished painting the building. I left the north wall unpainted because currently we have materials stacked there plus we may add an attached shed there in the fall. Here are some pics of the completed paint job.


View above from the east or head of our driveway

View uphill of the south side of the observatory

We'll evaluate the quality of the coat in a week to determine if an additional primer coat is necessary but I'm betting that, at most, some touching up should be all that is necessary. The regular paint coat will follow and will include a NASA developed additive that I found. Its purpose is to reflect virtually all of the infrared light hitting the observatory. That should keep the inside cool and limit the cool down time in the evening when we open the roof.

The last thing we worked on was weed clearance. Normally, by the end of May we are required by our lease agreement to clear all brush for a distance of twenty feet from all structures for fire prevention and limitation. All annuals, especially grasses, have completed 90% of their growth by that time and start to dry out by then. They grow fast and can be up to four feet high before they start to dry out. Because of the new threat with the appearance of a number of rattlers, we cleared the grass for up to sixty feet from our observatory at some points. We just cut and drop the grass - within a couple of weeks it dries to powder and blows away.

While all this was going on, John was diligently working on building his warm/control room on the observatory level from the floor up. He built the walls and roof as modules at home and trucked them out to our site last Friday. By the time I showed up on Tuesday he already had the walls and roof assembled. The rest of the week he was running electrical conduit and lines and water proofing and paneling the outside walls. In the above picture taken from the club's main observatory, John is on our roof installing flashing when not waving to the camera. You can also see the east wall partly tar papered. The other object is a storage container that is actually more than forty yards behind our observatory.

By Friday John had his warm room almost completed.

The roll off roof will be above John's warm room.

In the picture below of the west wall, you can see part of John's warm room with a slanting upper west wall. That is to accommodate the roll off roof with a clearance of about two inches. On the top of the cinder block wall, you can see two metal plates, the beginning of the rail structure for the roof.

For almost a year now, you have patiently read about the observatory and seen only construction pictures. For the first time, below is a picture showing a sample of what the observatory is for - John's telescope equipment for imaging. Mine will remain at home until the roof is completed. The setup is temporary but is located where his permanent pier will be. With this equipment and his knowledge of astronomy and his imaging techniques, John is already talking astronomical pictures among the best in the world.

Here is a closeup of his equipment:

As to the roof. Several weeks ago we decided that the method we have available for building the roof is somewhat dangerous and as a result have contracted the services of our club member who is a contractor and recently built the three observatories I featured in earlier blogs. The agreement is that John and I will complete the rail system on top of the observatory,. Gary, the contractor, will fabricate the roof from the wheels up. "Will" may not be the correct tense since earlier this week he updated us and said that he already has half of the roof trusses completed off site.

On Saturday I drove down to Palomar from home to conduct docent tours of the 200 inch Hale telescope. There were only three fully fledged docents and four trainees so I ended up doing parts of three different tours. I ran into a novel situation. On one tour with about thirty people, one person insisted he had read about the telescope mirror being removed twenty years ago and taken to Cal Tech in Pasadena for re-figuring. In reality, the mirror has never left the mountain since it was delivered in 1948. The dilemma was what to say at this point since the gentleman insisted he was right but I didn't want the rest of the visitors to have incorrect information. What I did was hand him my email address and asked him to send me information - newspaper, Internet link, whatever - that I could use to confirm his story and relay that information to the Cal Tech and Palomar historians who must have been misinformed. That seemed to do the trick. Being docent is a fun thing to do, gets me up into the mountains, and frequently gets me access to the observatory at night, and actually got me an interview on BBC TV in 2005.

I hope you enjoyed this update as much as I enjoyed writing it. With luck, we will have first light by mid-summer.