2014 programme

Establishing an observatory at a dark sky site (with Boss the Builder)

David J. W. Moriarty

AAQ, VSS

The combination of humid coastal weather and a huge increase in light pollution at Wellington Point has made photometry of variable stars difficult. Also, the Losmandy G11 mount cannot cope well with the increase in weight when the C11 telescope was replaced with a Celestron EdgeHD 14. Furthermore, the meridian flips during a time series run on eclipsing binaries often caused a magnitude offset, which lowered the accuracy of the photometric determinations.

The solution has been to lease 4 square metres of land at John Salini’s farm (Salileo’s Farm) at Glen Aplin, purchase a second hand Sirius observatory, upgrade it with a dome rotation system and install it there with a Mathis Instruments 500 fork mount.

Salileo’s Farm is at 750 m altitude on the Granite Belt south of Stanthorpe and far enough inland not be influenced by coastal humidity. A critical process was ensuring that the north-south alignment of the pier was within 1 degree of the south celestial pole to allow azimuth adjustment of the mount’s polar axis. John’s dog, Boss, took a keen interest in the construction. Some examples of time series photometry of eclipsing binaries at Wellington Point and Glen Aplin will be shown.