Little Plaindealing Observatory

At my home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I built an observatory in the late 1980's.  A friend who lived in a neighborhood nearby, mentioned that an observatory was for sale after a change of ownership of a property.  The 2.5-meter dome was made of welded aluminum by Observa-Dome.  The dome sat on a 10x10 ft. flat roof.  I purchased the dome and roof, built a 10x10 ft building, and placed the dome and roof on top.  The dome was automated with Digital Dome Works rotation motors from HomeDome.  A steel pier was embedded in a 2x2x2 ft. block of cement.  The mount is an AstroPhysics 600EGTO on which an AstroPhysics 130mm EDF refractor was placed.  This telescope was eventually replaced with a homemade 6" Maksutov-Newtonian Astrograph.  The optical parts, made by Marcus Ludes of APM, were obtained at an ATM workshop held in Bellingham, WA.  The aluminum tube is from Hastings Irrigation in NE and the 2 in. focuser was made by Moonlite.  The observatory can be run via a wireless LAN from my house.  Most recently I joined AAVSO and have started making some variable star observations using a SBIG ST-10 XME camera.

Light pollution from the Baltimore-Washington megalopolis rises as much as thirty degrees to the Northwest but skies to the east and south were reasonable at least thirty years ago.