Short description:

Perhaps you are already a stargazer using a small telescope you bring out to your back yard on clear nights. Perhaps you have a larger telescope that is mounted outside and protected from inclement weather. Perhaps you just dream of someday owning a fancy telescope set-up and turning it skyward to view the neighboring planets and moons of the Solar System or the stars that wink at you from millions of miles away.

Whether you might want to undertake building an over-the-top dome observatory yourself or not, you are sure to enjoy this informative tale by Gordon Rogers, told with humor and humility, of his torturous but ultimately rewarding experience with building for himself, attached to his own home, a fancy and sophisticated dome observatory, just for the pleasure of sky watching on beautiful nights (of which there are far too few in England!). Read about all the thinking and planning that went into this venture, and the options considered and rejected. Read about the choices and mistakes made along the way. Finally, read and discover the joys of sky watching using state-of-the-art equipment, and share in the author?s frustrations and triumphs as he completed this project of a lifetime.

Long description:

My Heavens! charts the progress of the author?s own substantial observatory (with additional material from amateur constructors of large observatories elsewhere) from conception, through design, planning and construction, to using an observatory of the kind that all amateur astronomers would aspire to own.

This book tells the ?warts and all? story of small beginnings in amateur astronomy, leading to the construction of a ?top of the range? observatory at a house on the edge of a country village between Oxford and London. The author is a qualified building surveyor, and looks at building the observatory from his own professional perspective. There were of course many errors, problems, technical and organizational difficulties along the way, and the author never shies away from admitting his mistakes ? and in doing so he reduces the chances of others falling into the same traps. Comparisons are made with similar large projects in the USA, taking a look at the differences and similarities in planning and building regulations, and in construction methods on both sides of the Atlantic.

Eventually an observatory materialized, set up to facilitate the taking of very high quality images of the deep sky on those special days of best seeing.

The story doesn?t end with the construction of the observatory, but goes on to describe the author?s choice of equipment, setting it up, and his own techniques for obtaining superb astronomical images like the ones he shows in his book.

Table of Contents:

Why Astronomy?.- Aperture Fever.- What Type of Observatory?.- Town and County Planning.- Construction.- Telescopic Equipment Update.- The Opening Ceremony and ?Sky at Night?.- Cameras, Computers, and Software.- Wrinkles Galore.- Photographic Results.- Stargate 4173 at Grimaldi Tower.- The Spring Gulch Observatory, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.- Public Reaction.- A Few Last Thoughts.- Resources.