 Hey everyone, Nico from Nebula Photos here. I'm here with Alan Midkiff and we are touring his two home observatories today And so I have a few questions for him and then we're gonna take a tour of the observatories So Alan, when did you buy this property and were you already into astronomy and thinking you were gonna make observatories on it? Yes, actually we bought this property in 1995. I grew up in the area at Northwest New Jersey when it was quite a bit darker and Growing up I had built smaller observatories But I always wanted to try initially to build an observatory that was integrated into a house I have a winch here that I open it with Because this this is where it hangs up and you can see where I shimmed it and jacked it and put in replacement wheels as a second set of wheels and But it just settles on this corner, so it's not quite enough. I can't get quite enough overhead push Strength to deal with it. So what I do a fix Like I said, when we have a group up here, I just get a bunch of guys to push it. I want them here by myself I just winch it. And that's it. That's how we do it now so Said initially this had a seven inch refractor that had the 16 inch Mead reflector Then I asked them out of them in 99 and got put the 25 inch reflector up here Actually a buddy of mine who was a photographer he stuck a house a blob in the corner and try to get a night's Observing with us. You can see the 25 inch a little bit here But I made a mistake as I had one last week and I turn I turn the house lights on and screwed up as exposure But I stuck it there anyway You can see at least you can see a little bit of the activity if I can do this again back then there wasn't really Rails available. I had this custom made a channel, you know now people use v-channels, which are probably a better way to do it You know the shingles like I said, yeah If I was going to re-roof this over metal re-roofing in some point it might need it But now this roof is practically new after the hurricane in 2012. Yeah, as is you know half of this roll-off I definitely would have used To get rid of this sag I would have used at least two by six rafters Okay, right the two by fours weren't quite enough to carry like I said We were working a roof weight single-person push-off trade-off versus Movement in the structure Do you think that's the reason for the settling is just this it's structurally the roof isn't yeah The building seems to be pretty well rack. I mean you could see it still slides pretty well I have to go out and service the rails, you know every now and then but you know The building is really hasn't moved so much. It's just you know, and you'll see I've even tried to put like Angle you can't see because it's behind the insulation. There's angle lumen up there. That's stabilized at some But the rafters really they really drooped a little bit What are the telescopes you have on the property now to do some observing so currently on the rooftop? There's a 2006 quartz titanium quest R7 but quest R so one thing that that I was looking for is you can get these seven inch telescopes now, but They don't have this control box on them the focuser just goes right there But the control box allows this finder here, and it has a built-in Barlow, which I never really really use But I wanted to have the classic control box on it How does the finder work? The finder it's if you look down here. Oh, right. It's got a mirror and the light pads just cross and you just I usually put Probably use the 40 or the 32 plosals on the other pier is a 1974 inch Unitron and in the field observatory is a 2019 I guess if you had a date it 50 inch f 3.5 telescope that Most of which was made by Norman Follum of optics Follum, but the secondary was manufactured dream aerospace So I went back and forth between roll-off roof and roll-off building and I thought you know the crowds were getting so big I thought it would be nice just to have a Telescope fully accessible in the middle of a field and that you know on paper at least that sounded good and when it when it works It is really nice. You just have people mingling around In retrospect, there are a lot of things you have to deal with when you have ground level rails so initially This was all just stone and the skirt wasn't here So after the first season 2012, you know when the stone kept getting kicked up on the rails and the telescope the building was racking Closing we put this apron on and then snow would blow under the skirt Or so we put the skirt on that seems to have fixed everything, but it requires a little more setup now when we go to get in This door on the other hand used to be here. This used to be the door frame for the 25 inch to fit the 50 inch in here we Had to expand it this way not so much of a problem but we had to go up on it too and When you have an entire roll-off building and my dad figured all this out in his head He figured out how to internally frame it because there's no footing to keep the building Constrained so it all has to be internally framed and he did a beautiful job internally freight him But the fit the 50 inch in here I had to take a saw saw and cut away a bunch of that internal framing so That's why you see this it's kind of widening a little bit We ended up and the other thing is we wanted to we wanted it to roll on tracks But not have a big step that people would trip over but since then we've had to add an outside rail So now it's kind of a tripping hazard, but it is what it is So you'll see all that when it rolls off out of the way So to open it now I've got to go outside and Take these I'll take the skirts up and the rail covers off So that was another thing after the first one is the rail cover So you can see where we had to put the outside rail here That's an add-on originally I just wanted this little bit of a step so it wasn't much of a tripping hazard But now I had to add that on to constrain the wheels because the building started expanding After we cut it apart and these are those guide wheels I was telling you about right here Which you where you could easily put a track system and a motor right run the track is right along that That base plate and I have a similar one in there One of the problems that I found is that we know when you you're opening when you this opens you'll see it opens under regular rails and When you open it opens it into a constrained situation, but when you close it the building could rack and twist and The parameter that we had to meet was That hole right there. There's a pin that drives down from that door that has to fit in that hole So we're targeting that hole So through some trial and error I mean originally we were pulling the building from here because there was asymmetrical loading. It was twisting the building so that's why I just put this Clip here and Found the best spot, you know where to close the building to keep from twisting and that is ended up being right here a shackle so Yeah, so I'll go I'll pull the skirts up and then We'll open it So this is this is a beautiful starlet express three and a half inch focuser But at f3.5 this 50 inch mirror the light cone is about a little over four inches as it comes through there So it was vignetting it so in order to fix the problem. We had to reposition the mirror I mean I needed another secondary mirror holder anyway So we kind of took care of all this at once So the secondary mirrors is 18 by 19 and of course it comes back on a 45 degree angle So the mirror is at about 22 and a half plus or minus And it comes out the side so if you look in here There's a baffle and you can see that's pretty close to the size of the light cone and that's a little bit oversized there What's going to go in its place? I have a Harry Sebert maybe a 4.3 inch diagonal so for visual there'll be a dovetail on here The diagonal will clamp on to it in with a paracord and you use it visually for imaging You'll take it off the dovetail and then there's a extension tube that goes into a Gemini rotating focuser And that has a clamp that clamps on to a paracord and then I have the spacing tube It takes that into a starlet express camera So that'll be so you'd be able to swap them out pretty quick all this stuff here is for the All this stuff here is for the yeah, this controller here is for the rotating Focuser the Gemini and the platform is accurate enough for imaging. Oh, yeah Well, we'll see once so that this This telescope has a model so side tech is really good about it's got a model and once you do in a knit on it It knows where it is right now the model is not that great because I haven't had a camera on here So the model is based on this right, but once I get the real thing done I'll redo the model, you know instead of 11 stars. I'll do 32 whatever but right now This just has an S big camera and that's what's tied in So it's enough now to use visually in for testing once I get the new system. I'll get a real model on it So this here. I mean the question is, you know Would I still do a roll-off building versus a roll-off roof? I Don't know. I think if I had just left an opening that big here people would have been able to get in and out The problem is that you can see remember that the time it was the 25 inch it didn't swing quite as wide Like if I had a roof here, I would have had to do like a wall Maybe this high and this would have had to come down to meet it. Yeah, otherwise I would never have been able to swing this thing around So like this and that's why you know If the configuration this might change again Which one I'm just gonna on the open deck in Arizona. I'll have a lot of options until I finally figure out You know how it's all gonna play out But so You know This is kind of a pain getting having all this crud here the worms come in and they you know I have to clean worms out. I don't know why they want to come in here and die, but they do But on the other hand when it's open like this and you have a group it's beautiful Especially when the hay is mowed because then people just are you know hanging around socializing taking turns climbing the ladder So we're standing by these this big array of solar panels Tell me a little bit about the impetus for doing that So we first built the the first house on the property the one with the observatory one of my goals was to try to make Everything on this property Energy independent that is not reliant on outside sources and the heating system who heating and cooling were geothermal Which you may or may not know are heavily electric, you know, basically pumps and compressors So I want to try to mitigate some of that and see if I could operate that geothermal office solar in addition to other normal household loads So in 1999 you can't see it from here But about midway down we put the first set of panels in it was a 3.6 Kilowatt system and that ended ended up becoming the prototype for the New Jersey rebate program so we from that time we kept expanding 2002 we added another 10kw and finally through 2010 we we've got it up to 25kw But now we had it a second house. So they're provides providing the electricity for both houses on top of that We went and added some evacuated to hot water heating Panels and that also provides heat in the winter and also domestic hot water What are you most looking forward to with the 50 inch telescope or astronomy in general in the next couple years here? Well, we we've Appropriated some dark sky sites in New Mexico and Arizona and because things have gotten so much worse here in New Jersey Both in terms of darkness and seeing Most of this now is just kind of a setup to get everything ready to move it down Just a matter of choosing which site is more optimum, but they're both pretty nice sites and border one skies Well, thank you so much for having me Alan and it's been a pleasure to see your observatories and learn from you today So thank you