www.baader-observatories.com
The long road to the perfect observatory...
When I was able to fulfill the dream of owning my own house in 1997, I included a dome in the plan. Because of a serious accident in 1987, everything had to be planned wheelchair-accessible. Unfortunately, at that time I decided for cost reasons on another dome manufacturer. I had purchased the C14 and my 130 mm Astro Physics with mount from Baader Planetarium.
The first 3.5 m dome kept causing problems. The dome was not wind-tight, drafts came in everywhere. By installing an inner wooden wall lining we tried to make the dome somewhat tighter. Nevertheless – when there was powder snow one had to shovel inside the dome. Spiders, wasps and other unwanted guests felt magically attracted by the safe place. Sparrows in particular were constant guests – they repeatedly built nests on the wall ring and under the slit shutter (= above the telescope...), so that bird droppings and straw then fell down onto the telescopes.
After some years problems with the dome rotation began; the dome kept getting stuck and the friction rollers of the drive only spun through. That meant: years without observation! Six years ago I then wanted to make the dome functional again with the help of friends. The rotation was so stiff that we wanted to convert from friction roller drive to chain drive. Sealing the dome turned out not to be so easy, since the running rollers were mounted directly on the wall without their own dome adapter. Because of this a sealing surface was missing, since on the rough wall no seal could be made to sit precisely enough.
But when in March 2017 during a thunderstorm the shutter was also torn away by a strong gust of wind, and on the same day my friend who had been working on the dome broke his shoulder and hip in a motorcycle accident, I thought to myself: now you need "Plan B" if you still want to continue doing astronomy.
After I had looked at all manufacturers (and because of my experiences with the first dome) only the Baader Planetarium 3.2 m dome remained. At the end of March (2019... !) the time had finally come and the team from Baader Planetarium mounted the new dome on my house in two days.
Since the Baader dome is higher because of the dome adapter used (it forms the sealing surface for the surrounding – perfect – seal...), I had to install a lifting floor so that I could observe at the horizon. The roof gutter behind the dome also had to be modified.
To optimally adjust the eyepiece position I also had a lifting column for the mount installed. At this point Baader Planetarium recommended a 10Micron GM HPS mount, which by means of its built-in automatic star model very quickly and independently checks its positioning after the lifting column has been raised. With another mount this accuracy problem would not be solved so elegantly.
Nevertheless I have not yet made this purchase, since I bought a new mount only three years ago with which I will continue to work for some time.
Now the observatory is almost finished and I was able to gather first experiences.
It is so great – finally having a dome that does what it should – and finally observing again with my C14 instead of with small telescopes on the balcony! The unavoidable proximity of the dome to the house wall made it necessary for Baader to supply an extended control system and an absolute encoder, with the help of which the horizon flap of the dome automatically closes upward shortly before the opened flap comes too close to the house wall. This too is enormous luxury compared with before. Above all the absolute encoder already knows when switching on where the dome opening is pointing. So I can be sure that the opened flap cannot run into the wall – even if I left the dome standing with the slit facing the house wall. All movements function perfectly. Thanks to the good advice from Mr. Rietze during planning and commissioning everything went well.
As I said – in contrast to before the Baader dome is very well insulated and absolutely watertight (and snow-, wasp- and SPARROW-tight...), whereas with the old dome I always had problems.
Now only the routing of cables remains so that in the cold season I can control everything from the PC. That is also no problem because Baader has already installed a circumferential cable channel inside the short cylinder.
The new dome can hardly be compared with the first one; everything is much better solved: the drive, the seals, the electronics. When you look at and touch the surface of the dome it reminds you of a car body, so smooth and glossy it is.
The price of the Baader dome is much higher than that of the other manufacturers, but if I had known the quality differences beforehand, decades of trouble would have been spared.
Kind regards
Georges Rasqué
December 2019
