Murmur Creek Observatory: Great Weather and Progress

This might have been the nicest week of the summer,

60-70's temps and not a cloud in the sky, last year it had snowed by now.

The week started with running into Sam and Diane Monday morning at breakfast. As most of you already know, Sam is our project surveyor. I discussed with them that since our telescope was off it's Pier I would love to have his help to precisely a line our wedge and index the dome. They kindly set it up for Wednesday.

Turns out this would have been easier with the dome off the building but that's not happening so we got creative with the tripod setup to get the transit over rotating center of the wedge.

We spread out the tripod legs, drilled holes into the side walls, then spiked the tripod feet into the holes.

Then the shooting began, first shot to a control point then a total of 6 sun shots which involves a stopwatch and a short wave radio tuned to some international clock station.

Sam has all the latest computer gear to do sun shot calculations, here he is with his voice activated laptop (it must be, he talks to it constantly)

After the math was done he then had to spend time on a ladder shooting through the dome slot (and I don't think surveyors are big fans of ladder's but he did a great job!) I now have all the index marks I need and a perfectly set pier.

Another big thanks goes out to Sam and Diane for their support of this project and good luck to Diane who is running for a Cook County commissioner seat. All of us here at Murmur Creek Observatory give her our support and think she would do a great job.

The warm room construction continued all week,

it's been hard to keep true to the picture I have changed the roof line 3 times but I'm happy now.