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What a busy (and lovely) day it has been!

Painting the scope room was first thing on the agenda.  I bought the paint earlier in the week.  I was looking for something reasonably dark for the scope room and having browsed through some colours, how could I not go with “Galaxy Blue”?  My daughter was keen to help, so out came the rollers and brushes and for the first time in what seems like ages I rolled the roof back so we could work in the sunshine as much as possible.  With two of us it went very quickly and by lunchtime the majority was done.  In some lights the paint does look quite grey, but in others it’s definitely blue.

We also decided to paint the sides of the roof — I’m not going to bother with the actual roof yet, in case I decide I need to insulate it.  That’s a decision for another time.  I still have the gables to paint as well, but again I’m thinking about adding ventilation to those so they can wait for a bit.  And obviously the end flap isn’t finished enough to paint yet.

But with all the other painting done in the scope room we fitted the aluminium section back into the walls and then broke out the roll of LEDs.  The self-adhesive tape on the back made fitting them a doddle, though I did have to think for a few minutes about which end to start from and whether I needed to unroll the entire reel first, as the connectors are male at one end and female at the other.  Fortunately it worked out that we could start from the scope room window with the loose end of the reel.  We felt it was necessary to finish everything off at that point and my daughter was keen to play with the mitre box and razor saw, so she did all the cutting of the diffuser and I did the measuring and fitting.

And here’s the result (maximum white, with the camera flash on)

This is maximum red, this time with the flash off:

And minimum red:

That’s all with the standard control unit that came with the LED strip. When I plugged in the wifi control unit I discovered that it would actually allow the LEDs to be dimmed even further:

It’s hard to judge without being dark-adapted, especially after spending most of the day in the sunshine, but I think the red will certainly work ok.  The white is harder to judge.  I might wander out after dark this evening and see what it looks like.

I did notice that the wifi unit has a tendency to whine when the colour settings are in the middle of the range which might be irritating, but I probably won’t be using that part anyhow, and if I’m in the warm room I probably won’t be able to hear it anyhow.

Not sure what I shall work on next.  I shall have a think on that this evening.  Had I trusted the weather forecast I should have planned a bit further ahead and sorted out the remainder of the bits to allow me to finish doing the EPDM on the rolling roof.  As it is it might be a good idea to get at least one pier finished so I can actually start using the observatory before its first birthday.

This evening I’ve had a bit of a “tidying up” session in the observatory. All the spare materials and tools have been moved to the warm room and the scope room is now completely empty and swept. Hoovered, even.

That done I removed and numbered each of the sections of aluminium channel for the lighting. The intention is that tomorrow I can start painting the scope room (more easily done if the lighting isn’t in place). I’ve bought some paint in the aptly-named colour “galaxy blue”. It actually looks quite a dark blue-grey.

Once the paining is done I can finally fit all of the lighting and test it out. I’m very much looking forward to doing that as it will allow me to decide how to progress with the warm room lighting (and ceiling).

The next major job in the scope room is probably getting the piers built, though I still have to sort out the end flap. Talking of piers, having cleaned up all the sawdust and suchlike, I discovered this around one pier:

Looks like a rodent has been chewing on my flooring. Clearly I need to get something in their to discourage it, but I might also fit some aluminium or steel angle over the edge to protect it.

There are also quite a few outside jobs I can be getting on with now the weather seems to be improving (for at least the next few days, anyhow).

Needing a “proper” way to hold the rolling roof in place I had a hunt around and found these latches:

I bought them from Amazon, but they seem to be pretty much everywhere. There are a number of different sizes and I bought the largest ones I could find, thinking that if I needed a longer one I could just join an extra bit of 6mm threaded rod onto the end of the existing threaded section using a connector nut.

When they arrived I decided that by making a small wooden mounting block to fit on the walls I could use the latches unmodified, so that’s what I did. Initially I put two in place where I had already lined the walls and then removed the sash clamps holding the roof down, fitted the remaining lining and finally fixed the last two in place.

The roof feels fairly well locked down with all four clamps done up (the “hooks” are mounted on the steel frame of the roof). If I get to the point of motorising or even automating the roof I’ll probably leave them undone, relying on the motor mechanism keeping the roof in place for most of the time, just using the clamps when windy weather is expected.

I’ve had a little time before darkness falls during the evenings this week to make some more progress with the wall lining. All the channel for the LED strip lighting has been fitted into place (though I may well remove it during painting) and all the necessary ends mitred, which has allowed me to get on with most of the remaining lining above the channel. The only bits left now are those that I can’t do before having an alternative method for holding the roof in place.

As regards holding the roof in place, I have some over-centre lever latches on order. I’m not sure they’re going to be quite long enough, but if they aren’t I’ll extend them using threaded rod or bolts with the heads removed and a connecting nut.

The occasional sunny day has also made it obvious that there’s some heat build-up in the scope room. Today I investigated further and found that whilst the walls don’t appear to be bringing in any significant heat, the internal face of the roof that was towards the Sun was far warmer than the side facing away. I think I’m going to need to do something about that at some point, but for the time being I’ll leave it. It’s always been my intention to fit at least one air vent, so I’ll see what it’s like after that’s done.