All right, Nico Carver from Nebula Photos here. I'm here
with Christopher Baker in the Chicagoland area. Christopher is an excellent amateur
astrophotographer and he's agreed to show me his home Observatory.
[Nico]:
So when did you build this Christopher? [Christopher]: I've been building it over the
last couple years essentially since COVID started. [Nico]: So what was the motivation for building an
observatory? Were you just on a tripod before? [Christopher]: yeah I would haul the tripod and
out from the inside and I got a couple stairs and I'm getting older and my back doesn't likes
to scream at me when I carry too much weight so it just got to a point where I'm just you
know I couldn't go out as much as I wanted to and we have such crazy weather here we'll get
clouds part of the night and be perfectly clear the rest of the night so there's a lot of times
I was missing nights of Imaging and I felt so frustrated having gear that I wasn't able to use
I'm just sitting there so I decided that it to me it was worth Building observatory so that I could
take advantage full advantage of the equipment that I have. [Nico}: When you were building it
so did you start by doing the pier first and then built the structure around it? [Christopher}: yeah
I built the pier first and had a design for that and you know I did a cad drawing first because
I'm in the cat and that kind of stuff so I did a cad drawing and came up with all my dimensions
and figured out essentially the lumber that I would need and then figured out where the pier
was going to go and you know I didn't build it to the exact height I built the pier shorter on
purpose so I can make that final calculation when it was all built um so yeah I started the pier
first and then we moved on to the to the shed well actually we did the electrical first then
the pier and then the shed okay and how did you design where to put it in the yard and like how
how uh High to make the walls and all that kind of stuff well like I said I don't didn't want to
crawl into it I want it to be more of a like a an actual shed that we could use in the future
if we sold the house somebody could come in here and use it for an actual shed. [Nico]: tell us a
little bit about uh the the mural on the outside of the observatory. [Christopher]: oh so yeah I
painted it all one color and then I decided that you know I have all this after photography that
I like I'd really like to put a mural on there and I had a friend that's an artist and she does
that kind of work so I asked her if she could come by and paint the one end she did that and
I absolutely loved it so then you know about six months later I had just recently come and do this
side so two of the four walls are done with the mural this side is based on one of my you know
Pillars of Creation photos but then this is just a Whimsical interpretation of a galaxy
that she did. [Nico]: and you've also decorated inside with Mission patches [Christopher]: oh
yeah so been into space since I was a little kid so I've been trying to purchase all the uh
human space flight uh Pat Mission patches for all the human space flight uh in the US so I have like
the Mercury and the Gemini and the Apollo and SpaceX ones I don't have the shuttle ones yet
but I'm hope that's on my Christmas list so one other thing that you'll probably want to consider
I don't know how you want to end up doing your track people do the track different ways
um some people use a v-shaped uh track that sits on top and then you have v-shaped rollers so the
whole roof rides on a rail it's not really held down by anything so I decided against that because
I didn't want any chance of it getting blown off so I this is captured basically so it's
a garage track with garage rollers and there's different ways of doing this mine's adjustable
you could also put them in a fixed way so let's just mounted right on the two by four
um so my roof really can't come off unless you take all these rollers off but on top of that I
also have a hurricane what I call her you know tornado straps so basically I can put these on
I have one on the other side too and then tighten these up so if I'm going out of town or something
or if there's a storm I'll come on here and just put these on Just for peace of mind but I mean
it's not going anywhere but yeah it's just it gives me some peace of mind that I don't have
to worry about it [Nico]: and tell us about the the split roof design because I this is my
first one seeing that kind of design and and tell sort of the advantages disadvantages of the split
roof. [Christopher]: well I wanted a split roof a because I didn't want the extension to go too far
out um and B I wanted to have that little space on the other side where I could actually work because
my peer is on one side and then the right side is more like a workbench and stuff so I wanted
that space I wanted a fixed roof on that side it also helped stiffen up the walls as well so for
all those reasons that I decided to do split roof is it necessary I don't know most people don't do
that they just roll the whole roof but again the more you do that the more the farther out
it's going to go and for me I just didn't have the space to do that if you were to [Nico]: you said
you were thinking of doing a remote Observatory would you sort of build it the same way as this
one or when you do things differently what do you [Christopher]: I think size wise I would
build it bigger because if I didn't know the limitations to put a second pier in
so I would definitely have a second pair because then I have my solar rig or my long focal length
rake and then a second you know yeah um so that's the only change that I would do differently major
change again besides the mistake of buying the wrong motor um the only other thing that happened
that I wish I would have paid more attention to but again I was just doing this on my own I
bought a couple a book you know one of the books that's out there I bought that and read through
it but just browsing the internet looking at other people's designs watching YouTube the only thing
that I did wrong in my mind was I didn't when this rolling roof was built we built it on top of
the the structure and they made one mistake in that they didn't Square it up so there's a gap
down here oh yeah yeah so there's a like an inch Gap I still have to fill it with you know some
weather stripping but the roof Twisted so when I put it essentially when we put it up onto the
rails it twisted the seat itself and when that happened that Gap form so the only thing that I
would do different is I probably would measure the first square and then strap it because we built
just the just just the rafters and then we put the plywood and then the roof on so if we would have
strapped it all together and then built it all it wouldn't have Twisted when we actually finished it
but it's you know if that's my only headache then so that would be about the only thing I'd change
I really I love it uh to me a lot of people say well why did you build an observatory in a
you know portal 7-8 area uh right next to a busy road well because I got a lot of money in Scopes
and other equipment right so I want to use that every day that I can so right now it takes me less
than five minutes to start Imaging I can decide inside I want an image tonight because it's clear
go outside take out my lens caps open the roof and go back inside and hit play and it's going
so for me even though it's not I don't get 30 nights a month that I can image
I can still get 10 or 15 and it's not like even if it's a partial night I can take it out
you know before when I was hauling out my big tripod and I was taking this big 770 outputting
out there and putting my stuff you know that was a half hour 45 minutes to set up and pull our line
and get ready to go and then at the you know at the end of the night I was bringing it back in
so it's like three in the morning I'm lugging it back inside so this is just like so I get so much
more use of it so to me it's worth every penny if I spent let's say I spent thirty five hundred
dollars when I you know all the other stuff 4 000 most on the observatory it's it's worth it
because now all this equipment that I have so much money invested and I can use all the time