THREE HILLS OBSERVATORY
Update August 2008
The main issues have been with condensation trapped inside after closing up for the night. (The inside of the flip top roof faces the cold sky when the observatory is open) The top was lined with polystyrene (which has proved difficult to stick as you can see!) A fan was fitted to one of the small windows and a tubular heater added. Even with all this, high humidity continued to be a problem in this particularly wet corner of England. I finally added a small dehumidifier which cuts in at about 70% RH and this seems to have solved the problem. (I still need the heater to aid the dehumidifier on the occasional days when the temperature is near or below freezing. The remote sensor from a wireless weather station allows me to monitor the conditions inside the observatory from the house)
The tripod legs stand on solid ground through holes cut in the floor.
The observatory is now semi-remotely operated with a local PC controlling the mount (GPDX/Skysensor 2000), the LHIRES III spectrograph calibration lamp and the cameras (SC3 webcam on the finderscope, Stellacam EX on the spectrograph guide port and ATIK ATK16-IC for the main camera) The observatory PC is part of the home wireless network and is accessed using "Windows Remote Desktop"