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Club Observatory COLUMBA Molenstraat 23, B9308 HOFSTADE-Aalst, Belgium, Europe North 50°58'17.561" East 04°02'23.511" Atltitude 15 m |
| In '94 I missed the encounter of Shoemaker-Levy-9 on Jupiter due to the fact my equipement must be set up for each observation. So I decided to built an observatory for the societies of my town : MURZIM vzw and J.V.S. Kern SIRIUS, Alost, Belgium, Europe. | |
| The ame was to obtain an observatory and a computer room separated by a hall. First we wanted to built this construction outside the village in open air but we did not receive the authorisation to do so. Finally we found a place in my own back yard, between my cactus collection. Due to a lake on place and a 5.6 m high building we decided to put the dome above the computerroom and the hall. | |
| The pier is mounted in a concreet cross construction of about 5 ton placed on the extern walls of the building. The observatory itself is a wooden construction that lays on the extern walls too, it is only fixed by the protecting galvanised plates outside. Vibrations due to walking around in the dome have no influence on the stability of the telescope. | |
| Originally I wanted a 12" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain, but we found a bargain of a Fullerscope mount and a 15 cm refractor of Lichtenknecker Optics nv with the necessairy accesoires. Due to the size of the tube I must make a roof with two plates. Due to the available place and the height I had to find out a system to put the roof plates away maniputlated from inside the observatory. I let speek the images. | |
| See for some of my personal results here. Back to my homepage. | |
| This specie started flowering early in the morning. The weather was (relative in our country) very warm. Only at 19 h in the evening there was a new progress visible. | |