USA 1st Lab ObservatoryI undoubtedly had seen photos of large world observatories in the science books I read at the library. This inspired me to have my own setup in some small way. The first observatory was located at home in the backyard, south of the city with unobstructed skies and no trees. Equipped with the first 30mm Tasco refractor, an observing program included the Moon, Sun and planets. A portfolio lunar "scrapbook" atlas was created by making drawings of Moon's surface and I began my own science book library (with topics of computers, robots, and astronomy) and built up the first laboratory. Dad gave me permission to have the clubhouse building the in the backyard where I installed a stove for winter and moved in all my science and astronomy equipment for conducting experiments. Visual observing included the Moon, stars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and projections of the Sun and sunspots. The first research program was to determine why the mysterious Moon had red on one side and blue on the other. It was also the first time I took astrophotos through the telescope using a film camera. The telescope was 30x30mm with telescoping sections, a sturdy metal tripod and coated precision lenses made in Japan. It came with creme colored lens caps and a leather tan colored case. Money and parts for projects came from parents and Grandmother, mainly Birthday and Christmas gifts and whenever I could talk someone into buying a needed item, like a camera and film. I was age 3.
My biggest introduction to Astronomy and telescope occurred one summer night when camping out with a friend. In the middle of the night, he hauled out a Space Conqueror 3-inch telescope from Edmund Scientific Company and in a masterful way, began to show me the night sky - Saturn, the Ring Nebula, Lagoon Nebula, and other spectacular sites. Upon borrowing the telescope, camping observatory was born. The 3-inch telescope led to the beginning of aperture fever and I wanted the larger 4.25-inch telescope from Edmunds Scientific Company.
This country ranch observatory had the darkest skies and lots of rooms for equipment. With 26 rooms in the American Foursquare style of Colonial design, I had three rooms to myself - bedroom, work room and a lab. However, the telescope was kept inside a lab building at the perimeter of the property. Dad took the largest "house" building and converted it to a machine shop. I got the lowly chicken coop which was a real challenge to clean and restore to pristine conditions. The first astrophotos showing Moon and star trails were taken here, developed and printed in my photographic darkroom set up in the lab. I bought boxes of "reject" print paper for 50 cents from a photography studio located at the edge of the city. Chemicals to mix photo developer, fixer and stop bath were purchased from the pharmacy and made film developing possible. I experimented with sepia "sun" prints made with an old glass frame the store had provided. The observatory included a complete weather station where rockets were launched to explore immediate space. To gain money for science parts, I rebuilt car engines sold to the neighbors. I was age 7.
This observatory was located at the red house property with access to a garage. The interesting observatory did not use conventional optics - I had created DIY ham radio equipment and built my first radio telescope. The radio telescope was assembled from a Heathkit GR81 multi-band short wave radio regenerative tube receiver kit and used a very long copper wire as the antenna tuned to the Cosmos based on formula found in the ARRL American Radio Relay League Handbook and S9 Magazine. It received radio signals from Jupiter, incoming meteors, upper ionosphere skip signals, and ionization sounds from around the world. One day the bare hook up wire leading from the receiver fell down to contact the AC plug prongs in the wall and started to burn. I was unable to find the burning wire and immediately contacted the neighbors who came over and helped locate the wire. It was my lucky day as the red house did not burn down and the new neighbors became good friends! I was in grade school. When red ants decided to move into the house, we sold the property and moved out.
The new yellow GLO was extremely productive, and contained a new wide girth poured concrete observing telescope platform. I set up an elaborate laboratory complete with a customized lab bench. A fine commercial "Deluxe Space Conqueror" 4.25-inch f/11 reflector telescope was purchased from Edmund Scientific Company and used to observe Mars, surface features and its polar cap for the first time. The exceptional optical telescope showed color, changing diameter, and seasonal changes. Plans were made to DIY the next size telescope - 8" in diameter. To gain hobby money, I repaired radios, electric keyboards, and electronic devices for friends, family and neighbors. I was in Junior High School. However, when the apartment owner let himself into the home unannounced when Mom was naked coming out of the shower, she immediately canceled rent and we moved out.
This observatory was created with the land located in the city a few blocks from Main Street. Lots of trees shielded street lights but there was still a large portion of the sky visible. The 4.25-inch reflector telescope was used heavily for astrophotography and imaging high resolution views of detail on the surface of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. A lunar photographic atlas was created and many celestial events were imaged on film. Thousands of astro negatives were filed. Edmund had two dream telescopes. The 6-inch was a bit small but the 8-inch was just the right size jump upwards to hopefully satisfy aperture fever a short time. But the cost was too much so I decided later to DIY an 8-inch telescope. An old lady living in the same apartment complained to the apartment owner that my Practina FX SLR camera shutter was making too much noise during the night and disturbing her sleep. The apartment owner laughed it off, and hence the old lady and the observatory were nicknamed a slang word - the Gouch. I was in high school. When a good opportunity came about to buy a home and improve it, we moved.
This observatory was spectacular and one of the most productive times using an enhanced homebuilt 8-inch f/6.3 telescope. I had high school summer vacation coming up and it coincided with the best closest opposition of Mars. I gained family permission to work all summer with Mars, and carpentered a photographic darkroom in the basement, and an observatory that spanned across the entire front yard. The yard was first paved with all concrete blocks, as shrubbery and trees were removed, permitting the telescope to slide from one side to another, thus gaining planetary sky access between distant trees and obscuring objects. Several awards were received from professional observatories who saw my planetary work, including Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona. My Mars and celestial images were published worldwide - including Sky & Telescope, Optica, Modern Astronomy, Popular Astronomy, Astronomy, Martian Chronicle, EOTS, Celestial Observer, and others. Work began grinding a mirror to construct a new DIY 12.5-inch telescope and a 15-inch tube was created from mixed fiberglass and polyester resin. I was ardently working on grinding and polishing the glass and making the massive mirror mount. To make money on the side and to help finance projects, I worked in the Physics Department at the University as Lab Assistant, made and sold telescope parts to classmates and teachers. Eventually I moved out into my own home.
After graduating from the University, I bought property and moved into the countryside a few miles south of the city, where I took over a steel shed and converted it to a roll off roof observatory. It housed the 8-inch reflector, and at the same time, work escalated to construct the new DIY 12.5-inch telescope in an effort to satisfy raging aperture fever. In need of more space, I sold my home and moved to a new home that had dark skies.
I sold the previous property and moved to a larger home at the undeveloped southern edge of the city, away from trees and lights. Here I designed and built a large observatory on top of the house and it housed the now complete 12.5" telescope. The observatory was very productive and I completed one 40-inch diameter telescope made from fine annealed Belgian plate glass, evaluated at 1.2 million dollars, and two 52-inch diameter experimental telescopes. I made the transition from film to digital image processing, making many discoveries. At this location, I designed and built a mirror grinding & polishing machine, and one of the first microcomputers in the world, plus talking mobile robot AI droids that worked in the observatory. Droid Zylatron was taken to the World's 1st International personal Robotics Conference (IPRC) in Albuquerque NM where it received the red ribbon. The droid kept track of CCD cameras, time exposures, dome rotation, issued oculars, and executed other observing routines.
Cavalier Mobile Observatory
Wanting to access the darkest skied deep in the country, I got the idea to go mobile with a car observatory and convert my tan Chevrolet Cavalier into a complete astronomical observatory. It was easy to drive to dark rural country sites. The idea came from seeing several mobile observatories made from modified vans, campers, and RV homes. Most represented very expensive modifications and I needed something much more simple and less costly. I purchased a Meade ETX60AT battery operated goto telescope and proceeded to mount everything into the car's rear trunk. The cigarette lighter provided 12 volts power as needed for the complete portable system. The observatory was ideal for observing and used AutoStar, Meade's version of a GOTO astro object system. The ETX60AT telescope also has a convenient flip mirror built in. I used a mac portable computer with a fast 4-bit QuickCam for imaging the Moon and planets. The mobile observatory had many great advantages and driving to any one of several dark sites took only minutes. About this time, I became international.
I was working on large AI thinking machines, brains for humanoid robots, with 240,000 processors and decided to break on a side project with small portable telescopes. Beijing City was built in the middle of a dry desert and seeing conditions were as good as dry days in the USA, even near downtown. Surprising, light pollution was not the main problem. Only on days without too much air pollution could observing and imaging take place, because at these times seeing was rather good. I used small portable telescopes set out on the paved plaza stanchions which were at the perfect observing level and shielded the telescope from the yard lights in between the skyscrapers. The Moon was imaged in good resolution with the Meade 60mm scope and a SONY camera. Experiments were also made with a Celestron f/3.95 FirstScope purchased at Toys'R'Us in Beijing. This telescope worked well with good added eyepieces at low power. A 40mm reached the limit. The latter telescope was used for solar studies until the plastic secondary mirror started to smoke. Other astro experiments included a study of heavy air pollution, which was used as a specific wavelength solar filter blocking the sun's rays effectively.Shanghai China Deck Observatory
In Shanghai China I designed and built a massive telescope by creating a flexible mirror. The mirror could be folded and stored in a NASA spacecraft, then unfurled, opened when in space at final destination. The first test experiment was with flexible mirrors in the 20 to 26-inch range. In Shanghai, a deck observatory was equipped with the Celestron FirstScope 3-inch Dobsonian reflector telescope. Studies included the Moon, Jupiter, the Galilean satellites, robotic automation, fast imaging without a telescope drive, testing Dob mount configs, and changing seeing conditions. The first light pollution studies were initiated with this telescope.
This observatory was on the open roof of a very high skyscraper in Taiwan, and gave excellent views of all four cardinal directions. Notably, the Venus Transit was photographed with the main telescope, a Meade ETX60AT telescope as the planet egressed across the face of the Sun. Safe solar projection was used with white paper and a SONY camera to capture the images. Years prior, I wrote a time travel article showing a computer predicted image of a future Venus Transit, published in Observatory Techniques Magazine. Many years later, the photographed Venus Transit looked the same as the computer sky software prediction!
This observatory was primarily active during the seasonal summer months of clear nights in July. A high speed digital Canon camera was used at high ISO ratings to capture large views of the night sky, stars, planets, and UFOs. The camera was used in 15x mode with combined optical and digital zoom to image the moon and planets. Many of the photos were published in the Big Brain AI blog. Left: Venus emerging from Taipei 101 at 3am on July 13th, 2012. This skyscraper had strange designed plumbing and after a knee deep flood, I moved to a new taller skyscraper.
Taiwan Home Room Observatory
https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory-indoor.html
Photos: Above - a Celestron 14-inch Edge HD is set up to image through open sliding deck doors.
Middle - At night, the Full Moon is just a bright dot next to the telescope, seen through the window of the Taiwan Home Room Observatory.
The Moon was imaged through clouds and haze on Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 8:05 pm local time. EdgeHD 14" telescope, Celestron FR, stock 23mm 2" EP and star diagonal, hand held Apple iPhone Xs MAX, imaged indoors, single image, processed with Photo, corrected for EP achromatic aberration, air pollution, haze & cloud penetration, and light pollution.
Taiwan Skyscraper Deck ObservatoryHaving a telescope observatory on a skyscraper deck or patio thousands of feet in the air is a unique experience. The telescope needs have any harmonic building oscillations isolated and if located in earthquake zone, protected from vibrating or tipping off the platform edge. An anchored steel railing bolted into solid granite or steel beams will help and anti-vibration pads can help subdue harmonic oscillations. It helps to have an adjacent indoor telescope room with the side facing the telescope to contain all sliding glass doors for keeping tabs on the telescope and for quick and easy access.
This included an experimental durable waterproof tent, ordered from China for $10, with a shape to cover the equatorial telescope and have a front that opens up for ventilation and astronomical items access. Due to the size of the deck, the next smaller size tent fit well and the purpose was relegated to housing and protecting the telescope from rain, dust, wind, birds and falling debris. The tent lifts up and off of the telescope, then folds for temporary storage during the observing and astro imaging sessions. It springs back into perfect shape when it comes time to protect the telescope and systems.
Singularity Observatory is undoubtedly a wild telescope astrophysics experiment - and has become beyond a doubt one the most powerful technological observatories I have ever created and managed. The original impetus was to simply invent a new method of Earth-based amping telescopes to increase their obviated size by 10x and 100X. However, as new ideas are presented in the world, it has become a mixed reception. As as result, I was openly invited to lecture at Mauna Kea, Keck observatories and the University of Hawaii to discuss the technology. In summary, a look through one of these modded telescopes can be truly spectacular and as time permits, the observatory intends to explore new discoveries regarding many DSOs! (M27 example below) In another ongoing experiment, a Singularity Telescope is studying M57 Ring Nebula. The smoke-ring appearing object has a spherical nature ideal for probing into the center and beyond, perhaps seeing what exists on the other side.
