Hey everyone, Nico from Nebula Photos here and this is the start of a new series on my channel
called "observatory tours." I am here with my friend Helena from Helena's Astrophotography
and she has this awesome blue observatory in her backyard so I thought it'd be a great
chance to start off this new video series with Helena and have her tell us a little bit about
her observatory. So tell us how this observatory came to be? (Helena) so i used to watch when i was
little when i was in primary school a program on CBCC which is a British television show
called 'The Dengineers' and i used to watch it every day before going to school and i used to say
to my mum how cool would it be if they could come and build me a den in the garden and mum was like
trying to calm me down and she was like you know what no like it might never happen but apply so i
applied i was really over excited about it didn't think anything of it though and i did hear back
from them and i got through like a long interview process and cut a long story short they came and
built it in the garden and it not only gave me the experience of the den but also working on a film
set and working with the team and i honestly think that that's what sparked my love for film as well
so it was an all-around awesome opportunity it's been a while now i think they came when i was 12
and i'm now 17 so it's withstood a lot of weather scottish weather so i'm really pleased that it's
still here with us. (Nico) awesome and and you made it sort of part of your whole uh
identity on youtube it's part of your logo so did was that something natural that the observatory
would be such a big part of the story. (Helena) absolutely like as you see like it kind of
incorporated its way slowly into the logo and it's definitely part of me i couldn't imagine the
channel without it it's not only like a working space but it's also a film space like i use a
lot of the backgrounds in it to film as you'll see in my videos i use it as a chill out space
it's just really a really cool all-rounder i love being in it and i couldn't imagine life without it
it actually makes me sad thinking about when i'm going to uni when i won't have it it's
really part of me in the channel now yeah right and so when you first got it when you were 12
how were you using it was were you already into astrophotography then or
so i didn't even know astrophotography existed at that point and i only had a Celestron first scope
so i sat up in the windowsill with my Celestion and looked at the craters of the moon and that's
kind of how i got into visual astronomy but it wasn't really anything serious and with the den
they really luckily provided me with a sky watcher 10 inch Dobsorian which is one of my
favorite visual scopes to this day and i started looking at like Jupiter and Saturn and the blood
moon was oh my god my favorite event with that telescope and that really got me into it but i saw
these objects and i was like this is really cool this is great but i want like a memory of it i
want to be able to take photos and i don't think i even knew the term astrophotography at that point
i think i googled something like how it would take pictures of space or taken for it was his face
and astrophotography came up so really all in all this sparked everything and it started everything
for me when you look at it like that in the long run. (Nico) tell us a little bit about the design
because i can see there's two different sort of sections to it here (Helena) so the smaller
section on the bottom is kind of a workspace it's got the star chart in it which you'll see
and it's got the desk where i kind of plan imaging sessions i can sit and chat to the camera
as well the top section is where like a telescope would go but i also use it now
newly as an interview space it stores the 10 inch Dobsonian unfortunately it still turns
around it still spins but unfortunately due to the weather the dome doesn't actually itself
open but we are looking to get this fixed in the future so pretending it's all fixed in a
working order a telescope would be standing on the top decking and i'd have the the windows
open and i'd be moving it about and observing the night sky yeah (Nico) nice i heard you call
it a den a number of times is that sort of like a a word here for like a shed or what does that
mean (Helena) well i call it den because they the program that i was on de engineers called a den
so like they like go out and make these dens so i just referred to it as a den and whenever i
say den people were like what but um yeah i just call it a den but as it's i think they
called it on the program the observatory den so i just referred it as the day (Nico) cool and um
you were telling me there's uh there's been some issues with it over the years and there's been
improvements made but still improvements more to make so explain some of the history of
problems you've had with it and how you've gone about fixing them (Helena) so there used to be
i think you'll see probably in like past videos there it used to be like paint splattered planets
on the front it looked ace absolutely loved that design but unfortunately because it was wooden
the mold got in and the water got in and it started molding really quickly and it wasn't
good and i was like i can't keep equipment in here it's not going to be safe so they actually really
kindly came back and fixed that issue they um like coated it in this plastic sheeting that you see
here absolutely love the color i think it looks ace and that was kind of the first problem solved
they were going to come and fix the dome that was going to be the second thing but coveted
and this was around 2019 so unfortunately haven't been able to make a return trip
but yeah i think it was really just the weather it sealed its shot with we had a really bad winter i
remember in 2019 it was really cold and really frosty and it got battered with the weather i
mean it's really good that it's still standing here today so the dome still spins but it doesn't
open but that is not permanent we're definitely gonna get that fixed in the future (Nico) this
is a traditional design with the the dome which only gives you like a small section at a time uh
towards the night sky would you ever consider a roll-off observatory or do you think the wind in
scotland would be too much for that (Helena) so i think a roll-off observatory would be really
good i think if they use the securing factors that they've got now it would work really well
like it would hold off against the wind really well because we've got bolts currently on it that
go all the way around and you like kind of put them in and take them out whenever you're rolling
it around so i think that would work really well for a roll-off observatory obviously if i was
using it as a normal observatory having to move it currently with the little window it's quite
difficult you risk it in the window in the frame and i'd also probably position it in a different
place in the garden because when they built it i didn't actually think about that like i wasn't
thinking about that at all in astrophotography i didn't know polaris existed like for example so
i'd probably move it to a more central position in the garden. (Nico) so i'm back in the US and first
off thank you Helena for being so open to sharing about your whole journey with your observatory i
found it very illuminating to hear about the whole history and what you do differently in hindsight
while i've been editing this video i've been thinking about my motivation for starting this
new series on people's backyard observatories and i have to admit it's for somewhat selfish reasons
it's a personal dream of mine to design and build my own custom observatory
and i'm a pretty slow person so i'm giving myself a timeline of let's say five years about to do
this at the moment i'm at square one i don't even own any land to put an observatory on but
i thought you know there's no better time than the present to start thinking through what i actually
want in an observatory and i think a great way of doing that is to tour as many of them as possible
and hear about what people like what they do differently and incorporate that into my plans and
so with each video i'm going to end by listing a few personal takeaways so for Helena's observatory
my first takeaway was that having at least two spaces within the observatory was a feature
i definitely want i know a simpler design would be just a single room and sometimes
simple is good but for me i think having one space which has a desk and the storage space it's
crucial for keeping the space with the actual main telescope nice and clean and uncluttered
and my second takeaway was there are definite trade-offs with going custom i mean i've always
thought i wanted to go with a custom observatory which means probably mostly making it out of wood
rather than you know one of the off-the-shelf kinds of fiberglass or plastic observatories
you can buy but after hearing about Helena's issues with rot and mold
i think i have to be pretty careful with a custom design because i mean weather issues can be a big
problem and the last takeaway i had was to do with building in flexibility into the design
because as Helena pointed out her observatory was really designed with visual observation you know
at the eyepiece being the primary activity and so to make her observatory ideal for astrophotography
would now be a pretty big overhaul there are a few issues um one it's not in the right place in the
yard for polar alignment that could be overcome maybe with drift alignment but two the telescope
space is actually on a second floor with no pier and then as Helena has said the window opening to
the sky has to be manually moved around so none of these are a big deal if you're observing visually
like with that 10 inch sky watcher Dobsonian but with photography those things make it a lot harder
so that's why Helena stores her astrophotography rig on the first floor of the observatory
but actually brings it out of the observatory to the yard for taking photos well that's it
for this one hope everyone is enjoying the start of the summer and this rare planetary
alignment this weekend until next time this has been Nico Carver of Nebula Photos. Clear skies!