Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. - President John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
My interest in astronomy dates back to the time when I, as a third-grader, got a copy of Fred Hoyle's Frontiers of Astronomy. I read it over and over, practically memorizing it, fascinated by the idea that we could actually figure out what was going on inside a star, an object that was just a tiny pinpoint of white light.
It wasn't too long after that that I got a small telescope; later, as a high-school freshman, I got a larger telescope. It wasn't too long after that that I wanted an observatory so I wouldn't have to lug the thing in and out of the house!
Lo these many years later, the time for an observatory has come. After a protracted search of the numerous places in the southwest desert that qualify as near, at, or in the middle of nowhere (so the sky will be nice and dark at night, that's why), but still within shouting distance of utility service, land has been procured. What follows is the chronicle of the transformation of 40 acres of high desert into my vision of astronomical nirvana.
So, like Dorothy, we begin by putting one foot in front of another as we follow the treacherous road to The Emerald City (or at least an observatory with electricity and indoor plumbing :-).
FLASH! (07/26/00): An order was placed today for a 400mm (16") Astro Optik LOMO Hypergraph, which will be the main imaging instrument at the observatory. Delivery time is 10 - 12 months. It will ride on an Astro-Physics 1200GTO mount.
Update 08/10/01: The observatory is nearly ready for telescopes - we only need to install a floor and the electric hoists. The Hypergraph is now scheduled for delivery in the middle of September; its Astro-Physics mount is already here. So the race is on!
The exterior of the building is now complete! This view shows the east side of the observatory (and a bunch of clouds, which are completely incompatible with the idea of an observatory). Note the 4-foot entry door in the east wall. (There's no floor inside the building yet, but you weren't supposed to notice that from this picture :-)
Yes, that big roof in the foreground actually fits on the tiny rolloff steel frame to the north in the background! (Wide-angle lens, perspective distortion, etc., etc.)
The roof is still too difficult to roll, but at least we're down to only needing three people to do it, so we're probably at the point where a heavy-duty winch can handle the job.
The eave flashing still interferes with the siding, but we have now studied that problem to death, and are about to get ready to begin to prepare to fix it for sure!
What remains now is installing the observing-level floor, building the piers for the telescope mounts, and putting in the electric hoists to stack and unstack the telescopes and mounts. (The optical tube of the Hypergraph will weigh over 100 pounds all by itself; I fairly quickly decided that lifting that up to eye level with one hand while threading the mounting bolts with the other hand would not be a workable procedure ...).
The Bunker Ranch Observatory owes its name to my builder. He tells everybody who asks that he's building a bunker, in reference to the buried basement. A while ago, he presented me with a sign dubbing this site the "Bunker Ranch". So it seemed most fitting to name the facility the "Bunker Ranch Observatory".
Next up: interior
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| Site | Well | Power | Septic |
| December, 1999 | January, 2000 | February, 2000 | March, 2000 |
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| Observing | RV | Basement |
| May, 2001 | April, 2000 | May, 2000 |
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Terry R. Friedrichsen
terry@venus.sunquest.com