I have a fantastic job. Most of the time we work remotely, but once or twice a year we meet in person. This time the venue was going to be New York. Someone threw out an idea - why don’t we move the meeting up a few days and catch the eclipse? I have a nice boss too.

The eclipse trip is a logistical nightmare. The memes about being able to check the eclipse route by checking where hotels and airbnb’s are fully booked are true. Many months before the event itself, we had to decide on a location. We chose Albany, New York, as our home base and booked a coach. Unfortunately, the company demanded that the itinerary be determined 72h before departure. With considerable cloud cover for most of the USA and deteriorating forecasts, this cost us a lot of nerves.

Here it is!

A first light from the observatory! Ok, it’s a bit of a stretch. The photo was taken with Vaonis Vespera that was standing on observation platform in front of the observatory. And it wasn’t the first light of that scope… but I was in the observatory, the roof was open and I was monitoring it all the time.

So here it is, the first image from my own observatory. The exposure time was 1852 frames, each lasting 10 seconds. Done with Vaonis Vespera, a bautifully simple 50mm F/4 apochromat scope, processed in PixInsight. The exposure pose no scientific value and is purely aesthetic. But I’ll get there soon.

Done!

After so many years I finally lived to see it! The base version of the observatory is ready! But let’s take a look at all the steps first.

Floor

Paul has finished the floor extremely quickly. Seemingly a simple thing, but due to the piers the installation of the girders, i.e. the beams on which the floor boards are supported was not trivial at all. The end result looks like this:

Season start

The plan is that 2023 will be the year the observatory achieves what the US Army refers to as IOC - Initial Operational Capability. That’s a fancy way to say lots of stuff still to be done, but the bare bones are there and it’s possible to observe.

Driving system

In my opinion, the most critical part still missing is the roof along with the sliding system. With my ’tackle hardest stuff first’ attitude, that’s what the initial focus should be. Thanks to the help of a local talent mr. Paweł Kulas, it was possible to install the rails on which the roof will move. This was not a trivial task, as each of the 4 rails weighs about 60kg. Together, that’s almost a quarter ton of steel…

Spring

2022 was a special year for me. My daughter turned one year old, and I slowly began to have free time. The construction of the observatory got off the ground, and I was able to continue things that started last year. The condition at the beginning of the season resembled a dump of concrete. A small part of the concrete blocks had been placed in place, but nevertheless the vast majority were scattered in almost random fashion. The situation looked like this:

Another weekend was marked by the continuation of work. This time in addition to Tomek, the senior of the Mrugalski family - Tadeusz - took part in the work. Thanks to his invaluable experience, we managed to solve several problems, significantly pushed forward the construction of the building skeleton. And Tomek learned a few tricks.

Arms and legs, or something about stability.

The built skeleton of the building appears to be stable. When trying to move it by hand, the structure does not bend, not even by millimeters. However, this may be a somewhat illusory impression. During a windstorm, the force generated can be much greater than the capabilities of one man. Here, the not-insignificant force acting from the side, which in the worst case can lead to the deformation of the skeleton into the shape of a parallelogram and ultimately topple the whole building.

Before

The initial state of the contruction was not an optimistic one. Foundation blocks, on which four anchored joists were laid. Plus four corner posts and a few fittings installed. Well, that’s something to start with. Fortunately, this would soon change dramatically. A long weekend was approaching, and I had an ace up my sleeve - my childhood friend Łukasz Kufliński decided to offer me his long weekend and together we would move the construction forward.

The construction finally gotten serious. The excavation is done. Twice. First time using excavator that was doing some heavy ground work on another project. This part was completely unplanned. The excavator operator asked:

Hey Tomek, do you want anything other digging done?

In couple minutes I came up with the location and layout of the observatory. Of course, I thought about this before, but haven’t had anything measured or planned in details. So I eyeballed the whole thing and went with _dig two 1m by 1m by 1m holes here and there". Five minutes later I was a proud owner of two holes in the ground.

After I don’t know how many years, I finally made it. I bought a piece of land. It is in the middle of nowhere, without infrastructure, littered, neglected. Perfect. Years of of constantly setting up the telescope every night from scratch are slowly coming to an end.

On one of my first visits, I took my camera with me and was favored by luck. There was such a visitor flying over my area. This must be a good sign.