The nights had been cloudy since my last POD use.  The photo above is from a webcam I’ve set up.  It was captured recently at sunset.  The Arizona monsoons have been fairly active over the last week.  Here are some photos of the storm clouds:

All the cloudy days and nights and rain, when it occurred, gave me time to address those few drops of rainwater that were getting into the observatory.  So, there is lots to catch up on here.

I started to wonder about that small gap at the top between the primary and secondary domes.  Last Tuesday night, I aimed a flashlight at the inside top of the dome.  I then went back outside, stood back from the dome, and looked at the gap with an 8X telescope.  I could see inside through the narrow gap.  I went back inside and studied the situation.  The pivot bolts were long, so I had previously added some washers to just cover the bolt threads.

No extra tension was provided by the washers, and they didn't seem to affect the positioning or opening/closing of the dome.  But then I started to wonder if perhaps the secondary dome needed some "squeezing" inward to push the top upwards.  So I decided I would move some washers to between the dome halves and see if that would provide a squeeze.  I did that last Thursday.

Here is what the gap (below the rubber L-gasket, just to the right of the vertical seam) looked like before I moved the washers:

I then moved four washers to between the dome halves at each pivot bolt:

The effect was immediately obvious:

The secondary dome top was raised and closed up the gap!

And the dome opens and closes even more easily than it did before I made the mod.

I had not been concerned about this gap but I'm glad I was able to close it since I’m a perfectionist.

Last Thursday evening, a strong monsoon thunderstorm passed through.  Just as the rain started, I went out the POD.  I spent about an hour inside, watching for leaks.  It appeared that my extra rubber gasket mod at the pivot joints solved most of the minor leakage.  I still had one final source to address at the pivot locations.  I also decided to add a little more sealant to the metal plates on the primary dome.  I was obviously making progress on resolving these very minor leaks.  All along it has just been a few drops of water coming inside.  Nothing serious; I'm just such a perfectionist!  I had to deal with much more water coming inside Kirkwood Observatory, which housed a 12" refractor, at Indiana University.  And it was a professionally made building and dome.

On Friday, I found out why water drops were coming in by the pivot joints.  The rubber seal tape had pulled loose in the corners of the secondary dome.  I applied some sealant there and added some extra rubber tape.  I also applied more sealant to the edge of the metal plates.  Now I just had to wait for another rainstorm!  And I didn’t have to wait long.

That same evening, a very strong monsoon thunderstorm came through.  This was the strongest storm with the heaviest rain since the POD was assembled.  I was in the POD during this storm and it was an excellent test.  All my leak mitigations seemed to have worked.  I did decide to reseal outside along primary dome sections just to avoid water accumulating along the metal plates. There was some water coming in at two bay joins at the bottom. There was so much rain, and wind too, that I suspect rain was pooling up outside. But applying sealant there should eliminate that entrance.  I also decided to add some extra sealing along the top of the door.

A couple of hours after the storm passed, there was a hole in the clouds that allowed the Full Moon to shine through.  I grabbed this photo with my Nikon D70 DSLR with a 70-300mm VR lens.  It was cropped from the full-frame image.

There were still clouds and storms in the area, so I didn't open the observatory.

I recall seeing comments someplace that sometimes it is necessary to re-apply sealant.  It could have been in the POD instructions video, something I saw online, or even something that one of the professional contractors who built our custom home over the past year might have mentioned.  I guess that has been true in my case.  Last Saturday morning, I patched the holes in the previous seal jobs.  Obviously, I'm not very good at applying sealant.  The source of most leaks have been lousy applications of the sealant.  I may be a perfectionist but applying sealant is not something at which I'm perfect!

It hasn’t rained here since that big storm last Friday evening, but cloudy skies continued.

Sunday morning I did a 360 degree "elevation survey" around the observatory.  I used the LX200 altitude/azimuth display to determine the elevation every 10 degrees of azimuth.  I also got out a ladder and climbed up it to apply sealant to the outside of the primary dome join.  To reach most of the dome, the ladder was outside; for the highest portion, the ladder was inside the observatory and the secondary dome was open. 

Now that I have a permanent observatory, and the observatory preparatory work has been completed, I began planning out some projects to undertake.  I’ll detail these in future reports.

Yesterday, 7 September, monsoon storms were again threatening.  But they never arrived here, and by 2000 MST the sky had cleared up!  It wasn't supposed to be clear but it was.  So I opened the POD to do a little observing. That is one of the many nice things about the SkyShed POD; you can be observing in minutes.

First up was Jupiter, with 4 Galilean Moons nicely visible. Seeing was surprisingly steady.  In the 15mm (133X) eyepiece, a lot of detail was visible in Jupiter’s atmosphere.  I added the 2X Barlow Lens to the 15mm eyepiece (266X) but the seeing wasn’t quite good enough to allow that.  However, a 9.7mm (206X) eyepiece provided a crisp view.

At 2030 MST, the eastern sky was getting brighter as the moon began to rise.  I went to M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules; it was lovely in the 15mm eyepiece.  I then slewed over to nearby M92, another nice globular cluster.  M92 is smaller and more compact than M13.  I then moved to M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, which was in the east.  Unfortunately, there was very little contrast due to the brightening sky.  The sky was taking on the look of a “false dawn” as the moon rose.  The moon cleared the hill to the east at 2042 MST.  The Milky Way was essentially “washed out” by the sky brightness. I decided to photograph the moon, even though it was still low in the eastern sky.

Here is a 1/250sec, ISO 400, exposure taken at prime focus with my Nikon D70 DSLR:

The moon was too close to the earth to fit entirely in the field-of-view.  But the terminator appears nice as the moon was a couple of days past full.  Here is a 1/250sec, ISO 400, exposure at prime focus with a focal reducer attached:

Since the moon was low in the sky, I didn’t try for any higher magnification photos.

I removed the camera and inserted the 26mm eyepiece with a Moon Filter. The view through the focal reducer was super, with the entire moon visible.  Without the focal reducer, the 26mm eyepiece would not show the entire moon.  I also used the 15mm and 9.7mm eyepieces (and a Moon Filter) and during moments of steady seeing, the views were really nice.  Details along the terminator were impressive, and some features at the illuminated limb were clearly seen.

I then went back to Jupiter for a final look.  Used the 26mm and 9.7mm eyepieces.

Closed up at 2130 MST; temperature in the POD was 72°F.