08.20.20

Still waiting on backordered dome from Australia. With pandemic still ongoing there is no ship date at this time.

07.24.19

All repairs have been made. Weather Cams, wireless repeater, UPS System and PC have been replaced.

07.21.19

Found further electrical damage from lightning strike. Repairs have been extended to July 23, 2019. Cams will be offline until repairs are complete.. 

07.19.19

A lightning strike on July 17, 2019 destroyed the weather cams, 1 computer, wireless repeater, UPS system and a few GFI's.  Repairs should be completed on July 20, 2019....

12.07.18

The new dome to replace the damaged one is still on back order. Scopes will remain on the portable mounts until the new dome arrives...ugh...The Davis consoles have been randomly dropping the wireless anemometer transmitter signal. After checking the obvious it has been determined that the signal is too weak at time to reach the consoles. All was well until a few days ago. Ordered a repeater to boost the signal

08.30.18

The Observatory will eventually be replaced due to the inoperable and unrepairable hatches. The damaged Meade main scope has been removed and scrapped. 

03.04.18

After doing some upgrades to the Meade LX 200 ACF GPS the past few weeks, the Wind Storm that hit my area Thursday night thru Saturday blew the shutter off on the Observatory letting Rain and then Snow pour in. The hatch guides & rollers were ruined in the process which won't allow the hatch to sit properly on the dome. I pinned the hatch back on to cover the opening but there is a huge gap in the back and small gaps on the sides that will leak. I cannot get parts or a new hatch as the company that made the Dome went out of business a few years ago. The Meade was flooded, all its electronics are ruined & the mirrors are hazy and one appears to have grease on it. The inside parts have also begun to rust. That scope is done along with the Coronado PST. The water also tripped all the GFI circuits knocking out the weather computer and possibly damaged the 12v rack mounted power supply. There was also some damage to the house. Watching the Davis console I saw  a 67 mph wind gust, likely there were some higher gusts. Waiting on insurance adjuster.

12.30.17

Installed new UPS System for Observatory Computers...

12.20.17

Main UPS System in Observatory was fried by multiple power spikes over a 36 second time period. Everything is temporarily running on a smaller UPS used for low wattage peripherals. I Will be installing a new UPS around December 30th 2017.

10.14.17

The Barn Cam and North Cam both died on 10.13.17... Friday the 13th....that's too good to make up. I did restore functionality of the North Cam but the Barn Cam could not be revived . Not replacing it for the time being.

08.15.17

Adjusted Solar Scopes for upcoming eclipse.

07.01.17

Removed and replaced Davis anemometers. These things do not hold up. Needs a redesign like their antiquated Weatherlink software.

05.04.17

Cub Scout Outreach was held today. Cub Scout Pack 156 in Pennsylvania came out to see the Observatory and get some hands on experience in astronomy. Weather was not the best but Kids and parents alike still had a good time.

12.09.16

The Observatory cam that faced southeast failed and has been removed. Not going to replace it.

12.01.16

Setup snowboard for the coming winter.

09.05.16

Installed 6500K Bias Lighting behind monitors in control room.

09.04.16 

Reinstalled the Meade SCT on the mount.

08.31.18

The Observatory took an indirect lightning strike damaging all the GFCI receptacles. Replaced all GFCI receptacles.

12.18.15

Installed new video monitor on pier for the MallinCam imaging camera. Rewired and updated rack mount components. Will be using a CoCoRaHS approved snow weighing scale.

11.25.15

Built 2 S-Pipe Aspirated Radiation Shields with remote sensor packs. Each pipe has a 12v DC fan. These will be independent of the Davis Stations and will be used for calibration and augmented tracking of temp, humidity and barometric pressure. Installed Solar Panel to charge the battery that runs both fans and the sensor packs when there is not enough sun to power them.

11.20.15

Relocated the DIY Radio Telescope to the NW corner of Observatory and raised the height of the Sky Quality Meter.

09.26.15

Installed 3 new HD monitors and a  new Dell Desktop with 8GB Ram as the main computer for the control room. All the PC's except the Laptop are now mounted under the desk and off the floor with wall mount brackets. Unfortunately it came with Windows 8.1 which sucks big time. What idiots thought this OS up. I mean seriously.  Windows 10 may be installed if it will work with the weather and astronomy software.

09.18.15

Made a new Observatory Control Room. All the weather station consoles and other equipment are not  wall mounted. Also installed new WP Aneroild Barometer and MicroTim Altimeter Barometer. Modified an old weather station color console to diplay the Davis Console info in RBG updated every 5 min. Installed new red lighting with dimmer. In the dark the Davis Console is hard to read without the backlight which interferes with my night vision. The modified color console can be dimmed or turned off and can be viewed in red light. Also modified a spare HD PC monitor so it can be wall mounted with other equipment  to use for viewing what the telescopes actually see thru the imaging cameras.

08.24.15

Added new scripts to my weather software.  Installed new weather cam on the barn roof. I was asked a few weeks ago to contribute data to ACON JHU Applied Physics Lab. They also wanted my 2014 data as well.  So very cool....

06.09.15

Lightning struck the Observatory for the third time. It took out 2 cams, an antenna, 2 GFI receptacles and a cloud sensor. I swapped a critter cam out for the Observatory cam that got fried. The meteor cam was basically destroyed, it did however capture part of the strike before it demise. May it rest in pieces. New cams and an antenna are on order.

05.24.15

Replaced the Lexan window on the Weather Sky Cam enclosure. Reassigned the snow cam to a critter cam for the warm months.

05.22.15

Decided to install Soil Sensors for the Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus. I installed one Soil/Leaf Station and 4 Soil Temperature and Soil Moisture sensors and will install the Leaf Wetness sensor next week. The data is actually rather interesting. I haven't had time to continue working on the DIY Radio Telescope but will as soon as time permits.

05.01.15

Installed a new Unihedron Sky Quality Meter and outdoor enclosure. The SQM-LU measures the brightness of the night sky. It records measurements in a number of ways but the most common Magnitude per Square Arc Second and Naked Eye Limiting Magnitude or NELM. The higher the number in MPSAS or NELM the darker the sky is. A measurement above 21.5 is considered very dark. Data is also sent to Light Pollution Monitoring Stations and uploaded to the website every 30 minutes. The Meter is idle during the day.

04.06.15

Working on a DIY radio telescope. The dish is done just have to wire everything up when time and weather permit and see if it works.

04.03.15

Replaced the meteor camera housing.

03.12.15

Installing Davis Vantage Vue weather station and communication gear in chase vehicle for upcoming chase trip.  Weather outlook will determine the trip date.

02.17.15

Installed new cloud sensor, replaced old rain gauge with a new Stratus. Experimenting  with a homemade cloud base height sensor.

12.27.14

Oy! Moonglow ASC Uploader failed again on uploading images to my server and All Sky Cam.com. Error log full of failed upload attempts. If this continues I may try Fling to send it to my server. Sending it to ALL Sky Cam may not work that way.

12.26.14

Installed new  Dell Inspiron 1 TB PC. Installing WeatherLink was simple, Virtual Weather Station software took a little work. Making Moonglow ASC Uploader software work is a nightmare. This is a very poorly scripted piece of software and technical support is almost zero.. Not a big fan of this camera because of these issues.  It didn't work correctly on the old PC either.

06.21.14

Lightning Detector is repaired. Detection range is now extended to about 40 miles.                       

06.14.14

Reinstalled repaired MoonGlow All Sky Camera. The first one arrived with a cracked glass dome when unpacking it....It is now registered at All Sky cam.com and contributing images....Lightning Detector under repair. There appears to be an intermittent loss of ground.

8.27.13

Installed outdoor GFI receptacle on Observatory. Installed 4 red LED lights on each corner of Observatory deck to increase safety when walking to Observatory on very dark nights.

08.12.13

Replaced Mitsubishi A/C unit exhaust vent shutter with new schedule 40 pvc pipe to allow better air flow and redirect exhaust.

05.25.13

The Telescope Cam was replaced with a new one and is operational again.

03.39.13

The SkyCam is back up and running so the headless dog is gone. Also installed new router. However the telescope cam hates the new router so that camera is temporarily down.

03.26.13

This is only a test of the SkyCam system.....There is no headless dog in the sky cam image. In the event you see a headless dog you may have eaten the wrong type of mushroom. (No animals were harmed during the testing of the SkyCam)

03.21.13

The Axis 221 SkyCam has been dying a slow death the last several days and is now toasted. The image placeholder will be blank while the camera is at the factory to determine if it can be repaired. 

01.20.13

Did minor upgrade to heater in weather station rain bucket.

12.20.12

The observatory dome and alignment encoders will be replaced in the spring.

12.19.12

Neoworx counter restored.

12.03.12

Neoworx counter went crazy last few days from a script error on the Neoworx site. Switched counters

11.30.12

Finally received new LX-80 mount for solar scopes after  over 1 year back order. Nice mount but has a somewhat unfinished appearance.  LX-800 is still on back order after almost 2 years. Come on Meade.

10.31.12

Hurricane Sandy roared thru. The weather computer was damaged by a power surge.  The weather station came thru fine although the flag pole has a split in the metal near the base. Power and ethernet and wireless  connections were lost at points during the storm but a couple of wind gusts were over 70mph.

07.28.12

The Weather Station pole took a lightning hit on 07.26.12.  All the GFI receptacles were fused and DSL, data and telephone cables were damaged. The SkyCam wouldn't respond but after a full reboot was operational. The weather station survived without a scratch but no data could be uploaded to CWOP, MADIS, PWS, Weather Underground and the website. All repairs were completed today.

06.25.12

Cleaned and adjusted Observatory Weather Cam and moved to new location.

04.21.12

Had Cub Scout outreach day at Observatory. Weather held out and scouts got some awesome views of the Sun in H-Alpha and White Light.

04.20.12

Been waiting for new Meade LX-800 Telescope since October 2011.

04.10.12

Ordered new Meade LX-80 EQ mount for solar scope rig. Delivery time is unknown...as Meade has this mount as a pre-order.

01.27.12

New Scope Buggy arrived. Solar scopes are now installed on new mount with mount attached to scope buggy.

12.27.11

Updated weather computer software.  Have new imaging computer for solar observing rig.  Need to fabricate a platform to attach to scope buggy to hold laptop.

10.14.11

The weather station ISS unit took an indirect lightning strike and turned the temp & humidity sensor into toast. Sensor was reading -32 degrees and no humidity data at all this morning. Decided to replace entire ISS unit instead of just the sensor since the unit is 7 years old. Should be up and running on 10.15.11 if it arrives as expected. Just odered new Observatory gear: Astro-Tech  65mm ED Quad Astrograph with Thousand Oaks White Light Filter, Lunt Solar Scope LS60Pressure Tuned Double Stacked with B1200 filter, Lunt Solar Zoom, Orion Skyview Mount and dual saddles for solar scopes, DMK 41 monochrome camera. In the Spring I will be adding a Meade 10 inch main scope with RC based optics and new mount.

09.02.11