 Hey everyone, Nico from Nebula Photos here and this is the start of a new series on my channel called Observatory Tours. I am here with my friend Helena from Helena's Astrophotography and she has this awesome blue observatory in her backyard so I thought it'd be a great chance to start off this new video series with Helena and have her tell us a little bit about her observatory. So tell us how this observatory came to be. So I used to watch when I was little when I was in primary school a program on CBBC which is a British television show called The Dengeneers and I used to watch it every day before we were going to school and I used to say to mum, mum how cool would it be if they could come and build me a den in the garden and mum was like try to calm me down she was like do you know what no like it might never happen but I fly so I applied I was really over excited about it didn't think anything of it though and I did hear back from them and I got through like a long interview process and cut a long story short they came and built it in the garden and it not only gave me the experience of the den but also working on a film set and working with the team and I honestly think that that's what sparked my love for film as well so it was an all-round awesome opportunity it's been a while now I think they came when I was 12 and I'm now 17 so it's withstood a lot of weather Scottish weather so I'm really pleased that it's still here with us. Awesome and you made it sort of part of your whole identity on YouTube it's part of your logo so did was that something natural that the observatory would be such a big part of the story? Absolutely like as you say like it kind of incorporated its way slowly into the logo and it's definitely part of me I couldn't imagine the channel without it it's not only like a working space but it's also a film space like I use a lot of the backgrounds in it to film as you'll see in my videos I use it as a chill out space it's just really a really cool all-rounder I love being in it and I couldn't imagine life without it it actually makes me sad thinking about when I'm going to uni when I won't have it it's really part of me in the channel now yeah. Right and so when you first got it when you were 12 how were you using it was were you already into astrophotography then or? So I didn't even know astrophotography existed at that point and I only had a Celestron first scope so I sat up on the windowsill with my Celestron and looked at the creators of the moon and that's kind of how I got into visual astronomy but it wasn't really anything serious and with the den they really luckily provided me with a Skywatcher 10-inch Dubsorian which is one of my favorite visual scopes to this day and I started looking at like Jupiter and Saturn and the blood moon was oh my god my favorite event with that telescope and that really got me into it but I saw these objects and I was like this is really cool this is great but I want like a memory of it I want to be able to take photos and I don't think I even knew the term astrophotography at that point I think I googled something like how to take pictures of space or taking photos of space and astrophotography came up so really all in all this sparked everything and it started everything for me when you look at it like that in the long run. Tell us a little bit about the design because I can see there's two different sort of sections to it here. So the smaller section on the bottom is kind of a workspace it's got the star chart in it which you'll see and it's got the desk where I kind of plan imaging sessions I can sit and chat to the camera as well the top section is where like a telescope would go but I also use it now newly as an interview space it stores the 10-inch Dubsorian unfortunately it still turns around it still spins but unfortunately due to the weather the dome doesn't actually itself open but we are looking to get this fixed in the future so pretending it's all fixed and in working order a telescope would be standing on the top deck and I'd have the the windows open and I'd be moving it about and observing the night sky yeah. Nice I heard you call it a den a number of times is that sort of like a word here for like a shed or what does that mean? Well I call it den because they the program I was on den engineers called it a den so like they like go out and make these dens so I just refer to it as a den and whenever I say den people are like what? But yeah I just call it a den but it is it's I think they called it on the program the observatory den so I just refer to it as the den. Cool and you were telling me there's there's been some issues with it over the years and there's been improvements made but still improvements more to make so explain some of the history of problems you've had with it and how you've gone about fixing them. So there used to be I think you'll see probably in like past videos there it used to be like paint splattered planets on the front it looked absolutely love that design but unfortunately because it was wooden the mold got in and the water got in and it started molding really quickly and it wasn't good and I was like I can't keep equipment in here it's not going to be safe so they actually really kindly came back and fixed that issue they like coated it in this plastic sheet in that you see here I absolutely love the colour I think it looks ace and that was kind of the first problem solved they were going to come and fix the dome that was going to be the second thing but Covid hit and this was around 2019 so unfortunately haven't been able to make a return trip but yeah I think it was really just the weather it sealed it's shot with we had a really bad winter I remember in 2019 it was really cold and really frosty and it got battered with the weather I mean it's really good that it's still standing here today so the dome still spins but it doesn't open but that is not permanent we're definitely going to get that fixed in the future this is a traditional design with the the dome which only gives you like a small section at a time towards the night sky would you ever consider a roll-off observatory or do you think the wind in Scotland would be too much for that so I think a roll-off observatory would be really good I think if they use the securing factors that they've got now it would work really well like it would hold off against the wind really well because we've got bolts currently on it that go all the way around and you like kind of put them in and take them out whenever you're rolling it around so I think that would work really well for a roll-off observatory obviously if I was using it as a normal observatory having to move it currently with the little window it's quite difficult you risk getting the window in the frame and I'd also probably position it in a different place in the garden because when they built it I didn't actually think about that like I wasn't thinking about that at all in astrophotography I didn't know Polaris existed like for example so I'd probably move it to a more central position in the garden so I'm back in the US and first off thank you Helen for being so open to sharing about your whole journey with your observatory I found it very illuminating to hear about the whole history and what you do differently in hindsight while I've been editing this video I've been thinking about my motivation for starting this new series on people's backyard observatories and I have to admit it's for somewhat selfish reasons it's a personal dream of mine to design and build my own custom observatory and I'm a pretty slow person so I'm giving myself a timeline of let's say five years about to do this at the moment I'm at square one I don't even own any land to put an observatory on but I thought you know there's no better time than the present to start thinking through what I actually want in an observatory and I think a great way of doing that is to tour as many of them as possible and hear about what people like what they do differently and incorporate that into my plans and so with each video I'm going to end by listing a few personal takeaways so for Helen's Observatory my first takeaway was that having at least two spaces within the observatory was a feature I definitely want I know a simpler design would be just a single room and sometimes simple is good but for me I think having one space which has a desk and the storage space it's crucial for keeping the space with the actual main telescope nice and clean and uncluttered and my second takeaway was there are definite trade-offs with going custom I mean I've always thought I wanted to go with a custom observatory which means probably mostly making it out of wood rather than you know one of the off-the-shelf kinds of fiberglass or plastic observatories you can buy but after hearing about Helen's issues with rot and mold I think I have to be pretty careful with a custom design because I mean whether issues can be a big problem and the last takeaway I had was to do with building in flexibility into the design because as Helen appointed out her observatory was really designed with visual observation you know at the eyepiece being the primary activity and so to make her observatory ideal for astrophotography would now be a pretty big overhaul there are a few issues one it's not in the right place in the yard for polar alignment that could be overcome maybe with drift alignment but two the telescope space is actually on a second floor with no pier and then as Helena said the window opening to the sky has to be manually moved around so none of these are a big deal if you're observing visually like with that 10 inch sky watcher dobsonian but with photography those things make it a lot harder so that's why Helena stores her astrophotography rig on the first floor of the observatory but actually brings it out of the observatory to the yard for taking photos well that's it for this one hope everyone is enjoying the start of the summer and this rare planetary alignment this weekend till next time this has been Nico Carver of Nebula Photos Clear Skies