The Dog House Observatory
June 5, 2009
On my 50th birthday, I watched this observatory being built at my home just north of Guelph, Ontario, by Wayne Parker’s crew from SkyShed. The observatory was a 50th birthday present from my wife Gail. Wayne and I sat on a couch on my driveway and talked (actually he mostly talked, and I mostly listened). We had a gas! I built a fully insulated warm room inside the 12’x14′ observatory. The pier is filled with construction sand and attached to concrete footings set about 2m deep into the ground. There are storage benches along the north wall, and overall it’s a nice place to hang out as well as to image the sky.
Having an observatory has completely changed my astronomy experience. I spend relatively little time setting up and closing down, and can take advantage of very small windows of clear sky to capture images.
The last thing to automate is the roof, including an all-sky camera to detect when clouds roll in.
Awesome observatory Ron! Looks like a great place to hang out and image and sure beats roughing it in a camping chair like I’ve been doing. Your images are truly inspirational. I will be following your work closely, and I hope to meet you in the near future.
Very nice mate !!
Great setup and love your work! An inspiration for a late but enthusiastic starter to astro imaging 🙂
Very nice setup and your beautiful image results are truly an inspiration.
Having personally been in the doghouse I can say it is superb. The warm room is indeed warm and the shots taken from this observatory are phenomenal. Thanks Ron for always sharing your adventures!
Very nice mate!!! Nice setup something innovative !! Hope we have some setup like you here in Singapore…
Wow, what an incredible birthday gift! It sounds like your observatory has truly transformed your astronomy experience. I wish I had an observatory like that!
Thanks for the inspiration, anyway!
Happy astro…
It really changed everything for me. I know I am very lucky.
New to this star gazing thing.
Your images are amazing and thank you for sharing.
I am about to build a concrete platform to ease my setup routine, looking at your fantastic shed”dog house” my question is how close can you get to the horizon?
I live just outside of Westport, On, and my set up concern is the tree line around my scope when set up.
Thank you for the superb photos.
Geoff
I can shoot from about 30 degrees altitude up, and from about declination -10 degrees to +90 degrees. I don’t worry about shooting near the horizon. The air is more turbulent and less transparent at low altitudes. I generally try to choose targets that are above 30 degrees altitude during an imaging session.