My dream has finally become reality! Presenting my micro-ROR observatory, made from a heavily modified Suncast Glide-Top shed. The roof rides on an extruded aluminum 40x40mm linear rail via roller bearings fastened to 20x80mm gantry plates. The rollers ride inside the v-slots, making the roof captive. I just added the motor drive system and it works great! Next plans are to automate the roof using an Arduino controller an tieing it into Starkeeper Voyager/ASCOM. Also would like to build a DIY cloud sensor/weather package eventually.
It's been a long time coming for this. I used to live in the city and had to travel out an hour or more just to set up, image, pack up, go home and try to get sleep before working my day job. Either that, or pray for a free weekend and still not be well rested for daytime activities with my family. Now I have darker skies and am able to image with a few clicks of a button. It's so nice to wake up well-rested with a hard drive full of data. Having an observatory has been the next best thing since discovering plate solving! Now I have another problem... finding the time to process all my data
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