Now THAT'S a pier!

My idea for a new observing pier was simple – get a metal pipe and sink it in some concrete. Mark Gibson, of ClearVue Optics, however, had better ideas. He took my simplistic approach and fabricated a still simple, but very versatile pier which is now installed as part of the observing deck.

The 15-inch continues to dominate the deck, but I like to use other scopes on there and I was getting tired of setting up tripods and tripping over their legs, so the decision was made to extend the observing deck to the rear of the observatory - covering the small grass/mud area that was there – and adding a pier versatile enough to handle anything from an 8-inch SCT scope to the tiny, but powerful, Personal Solar Telescope. It also gets used for a parallelogram binocular mount for astronomical binoculars and for the 80mmED refractor.

I poured a 12-inch concrete pier to below frost level and following Mark's instructions inserted the four large bolts he provided. This was his first improvement, Instead of having the pier embedded in the concrete, it's attached to the concrete, so is removable if at some later date I want to do something else. Mark accomplished this by welding a plate to the bottom of the pier.

Mark then added two more plates with bolts to the top of the pier. This makes it very easy to do two important things – first, level the top of the pier by adjusting the nuts – and second, easily attach the scope mount through a central hole that can be reached by putting your hand between the plates. It also makes a convenient shelf for tea mug and eyepieces, keeping them free from dew when not in use.

Once installed I built a low level deck around the pier that was level with the existing deck and closes the area to the observatory.

At the very least, this means two people can be observing at once - and with the advent of video astronomy at Drfitway this becomes especially important, helping to link visual observing with video observing. For example, with the LX-90 mounted on the pier and a video camera hooked up to it, the camera could be locked on the same object someone is examing visually with the 15-inch. That makes it possible to discuss what is being seen in the eypiece by referencing the screen as well as note what different detectors - our eyes and a CCD chip - pick up in terms of wavelength and light intensity.