 Alright, Nico Carver from Nebula Photos here. I'm here with Christopher Baker in the Chicago land area. Christopher is an excellent amateur astrophotographer and he's agreed to show me his home observatory. So, when did you build this, Christopher? I've been building it over the last couple years, essentially since COVID started. So, what was the motivation for building the observatory? Were you just on a tripod before? Yeah, I would haul the tripod and out from the inside and I got a couple stairs and I'm getting older and my back doesn't like to scream at me when I carry too much weight. So, it just got to a point where I'm just, you know, I couldn't go out as much as I wanted to. And we have such crazy weather here, we'll get clouds part of the night and be perfectly clear the rest of the night. So, there's a lot of times I was missing nights of imaging and I felt so frustrated having gear that I wasn't able to use just sitting there. So, I decided that to me it was worth building an observatory so that I could take full advantage of the equipment that I have. And when you were building it, so did you start by doing the pier first and then build the structure around it? Yeah, I built the pier first and I had a design for that and, you know, I did a CAD drawing first because I'm in the CAD and that kind of stuff. So, I did a CAD drawing and came up with all my dimensions and figured out essentially the lumber that I would need and then figured out where the pier was going to go and, you know, I didn't build it to the exact height, I built the pier shorter on purpose so I can make that final calculation when it was all built. So, yeah, I started the pier first and then we moved on to the shed. Well, I actually did the electrical first, then the pier and then the shed. And how did you design where to put it in the yard and like how high to make the walls and all that kind of stuff? Well, like I said, I didn't want to crawl into it. I wanted to be more of a like an actual shed that we could use in the future if we saw the house and we could come in here and use it for an actual shed. Tell us a little bit about the mural on the outside of the observatory. Oh, so, yeah, I painted it all one color and then I decided that, you know, I have all this astrophotography that I'd like. I'd really like to put a mural on there and I had a friend that's an artist and she does that kind of work. So I asked her if she could come by and paint the one end. She did that and I absolutely loved it. So then, you know, about six months later I had her just recently come and do this side. So two of the four walls are done with the mural. This side is based on one of my, you know, pillars of creation photos, but then this is just a whimsical interpretation of a galaxy that she did. And you've also decorated inside with mission patches? Oh, yeah. So I've been into space since I was a little kid, so I've been trying to purchase all the human spaceflight mission patches for all the human spaceflight in the U.S. So I have like the Mercury and the Gemini and the Apollo and SpaceX ones. I don't have the shuttle ones yet, but I'm hoping that's on my Christmas list. So one other thing that you'll probably want to consider, I don't know how you want to end up doing your track. People do the track different ways. Some people use a V-shaped track that sits on top and then you have V-shaped rollers. So the whole roof rides on a rail. It's not really held down by anything. So I decided against that because I didn't want any chance of it getting blown off. So this is captured basically. So it's a garage track with garage rollers. And there's different ways of doing this. Mine's adjustable. You could also put them in a fixed way. So it's just mounted right on the two by four. So my roof really can't come off unless you take all these rollers off. But on top of that, I also have hurricane, what I call her, you know, tornado straps. So basically I can put these on. I have one on the other side too, and then tighten these up. So if I'm going out of town or something or there's a storm, I'll come on here and just put these on just for peace of mind. But I mean, it's not going anywhere, but it's just, it gives me some peace of mind that I don't have to worry about it. And tell us about the split roof design. Because this is my first one seeing that kind of design and tell us sort of the advantages, disadvantages of the split roof. Well, I wanted the split roof, A, because I didn't want the extension to go too far out. And B, I wanted to have that little space on the other side where I could actually work. Because my pier is on one side and then the right side is more like a workbench and stuff. So I wanted that space. I wanted a fixed roof on that side. It also helps stiffen up the walls as well. So for all those reasons that I decided to do the split roof, is it necessary? I don't know. Most people don't do that. They just roll the whole roof. But again, the more you do that, the more the farther out it's going to go. And for me, I just didn't have the space to do that. If you were to, you said you were thinking of doing a remote observatory, would you sort of build it the same way as this one? Or would you do things differently? I think I, the size wise, I would build it bigger because if I didn't know the limitations to put a second pier in. So I would definitely have a second pier because then I have my solar rig or my long focal length rig and then a second, you know. So that's the only change that I would do differently, major change. Again, besides the mistake of buying the wrong motor. The only other thing that happened that I wish I would have paid more attention to. But again, I was just doing this on my own. I bought a couple, a book, you know, one of the books that's out there. I bought that and read through it. But just browsing the internet, looking at other people's designs, watching YouTube. The only thing that I did wrong in my mind was I didn't, when this rolling roof was built, we built it on top of the structure. And they made one mistake in that they didn't square it up. So there's a gap down here. So there's a like an inch gap. I still have to fill it with, you know, some weather stripping. But the roof twisted. So when I put it, essentially when we put it up onto the rails, it twisted the seat itself. And when that happened, that gap formed. So the only thing that I would do different is I probably would measure the first square and then strap it because we built just the rafters and then we put the plywood and then the roof on. So if we would have strapped it all together and then built it all, it wouldn't have twisted when we actually finished it. But it's, you know, if that's my only headache, then so that'd be about the only thing I'd change. I really, I love it. To me, a lot of people say, well, why did you build an observatory in a, you know, a Bordel seven, eight area right next to a busy road? Well, because I got a lot of money in scopes and other equipment, right? So I want to use that every day that I can. So right now it takes me less than five minutes to start imaging. I can decide inside, I want to image tonight because it's clear, go outside, take out my lens caps, open the roof and go back inside and hit play and it's going. So for me, even though it's not, I don't get 30 nights a month that I can image, I can still get 10 or 15. And it's not like, even if it's a partial night, I can take it out. You know, before when I was hauling out my big tripod and I was taking this big 770 out, putting it out there and putting my stuff, you know, that was a half hour, 45 minutes to set up and pull our line and get ready to go. And then at the, you know, at the end of the night, I was bringing it back in. So it's like three in the morning, I'm lugging it back inside. So this is just like, I get so much more use out. So to me, it's worth every penny. If I spent, let's say I spent $3,500 when I, you know, all the other stuff, 4,000 most on the observatory, it's worth it because now all this equipment that I have so much money invested and I can use all the time.