Situated in the New Forest, UK

The Haven Observatory is housed in a 7ft Sirius Dome supplied by Pulsar Optical. It was
installed in the autumn of 2008 and replaced a hand built hexagon structure made from
OSB board an 2x2 timber framing. It houses my primary instruments -

• a Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS OTA, 

• an Opticstar 127mm Apo

 

side by side mounted on Skywatcher EQ8 mount on top of an Altair Astro pier.

The dome base rests on a concrete base 6" thick, dug out and laid by hand:-)

Power is run to the dome via an underground heavy duty, frost proof extension cable from a log cabin at the other side of the garden protected by an RCD.

 

You can see from the pics that my site is arboreally challenged.

A 9ft hedge and (~50ft) conifer block the north east aspect - not too bad as that is where the
sky glow from Southampton is at its worst. There is an oak tree due east and another tree
due south.

 

Believe it or not the dome is placed to maximise the amount of sky I can access.

It just means I have to wait longer in the evenings to see anything that rising. Typically this means that I observe objects in the East one month or more later than folks with a clear eastern horizon