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Welcome to the Linnhe Observatory web site

These pages feature extensive construction details for my observatory completed in the summer of 2001 for a Meade LX200 10" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope

page 1


The introduction

Hi, I'm Mark Baines. My wife Jane, Katie our daughter, and myself live in the Highlands of Scotland.

Over the next pages I give extensive details of how this observatory was built. I make no apology for the amount of content. Some of you looking at this site will be interested in building something like it yourself. When I was looking for ideas I was often disappointed by how little detail there was on the web. Being inexperienced in such matters I needed that amount of detail and in the end I spent an awful long time working it all out for myself. I hope this site saves you some time.

The Linnhe Observatory, myself and Katie image

The Linnhe Observatory, myself and Katie (now an heroic nurse!)

OK, truth be told, I wanted a dome. They keep all extraneous light out, are wind-proof (very important here as I live on the coast and there is nearly always a wind) and they are sexy! I know some people say that they like to see the whole sky, well most of the small domes allow you to stand in the slot and look up. I put an order in with the only guy I could find in the UK who was making them but after very long delays, unreturned phone calls and eventually a lost deposit (he did a runner!) I gave up on the idea until I saw that Broadhurst Clarkson & Fuller (now Telescope House) in London had started making them. But the price was too much, I just couldn't justify well over £4000 for what was in essence several panels of fibreglass. So I decided to build one myself - no easy decision, I'd not done anything like this before.

However, that's jumping ahead a couple of years. First I built a pier and a concrete pad to mount the dome on.

 

Copyright © 2002-2020 Mark S Baines All Rights Reserved     -     Last updated: 23 05 2020