Minor Planets/Astromery
 


Software Bisque
Observatory
(SBO)

Roll-Off Roof and Roll-Off Building! The roll-off building is also the warm room for control of the scopes.
 

20 inch F/4 custom Newtonian

12.5 inch f/12 finder
classical Cassegrain
 


Back View


The two
mirrors
are clearly visible

The mountain in the back Coal Creek Peak on the left more often than not looks blue as the picture demonstrates. That is why the area is called Blue Mountain Estates. The observatory was built in July of 1993!  Back then there weren't too many amateurs armed with an automated 20 inch goto scopes and a CCD camera, but today this is quite common place. In fact there are nearly a dozen 20 inch RCOS Paramount ME systems out there now (probably more) and even more are being installed on a regular basis.

Example TPoint RMS pointing data from scope

Note the Tube Flexure term used

TheSky Site information for the Observatory.

In TheSky it is listed as Blue Mountain Observatory
in the Observatories list provided

Site Information from TheSky

NOTE:  Do not try to use a compass near a cement mixer! You will get erroneous readings.   Secondly rather than use a compass to find north use the much more accurate Daytime Method detailed here.

Observatory construction
began in July of 1993!


Makes me feel old!

The above images are scanned photographs! This was back long before digital cameras were "off-the-shelf" circa 1993.

 

The observatory name was changed from Blue Mountain to "SBO" because there was a conflict with another observatory using the same name. This observatory had obtained an observatory code making it official.