Latitude 37° 42' 56.2" S, Longitude 145° 10' 02.3" E, height above MSL 100 m.

About the Observatory

The Woodridge Observatory building was completed in May 2001. It is set on a southern slope in a pear orchard dotted with blueberries, stone fruit and apple trees. Oh, and a vineyard with Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grapes.

That particularly beautiful 2.9-metre fibreglass dome, in the recurved Keck style but a little smaller, was built by Col Blumson of Astro-Domes in Queensland, and I can heartily recommend his domes, and his company, for all your many dome needs. The telescope room has sliding windows on three sides to assist in cooling at night.

Mains power is brought from the house, about 100m way, by an underground cable. It's converted to 12VDC for the telescope and other equipment by a high-quality laboratory-grade power supply. The dome is also turned by a 12V motor which draws a lot of current, so it is powered by a 12V deep-cycle battery to avoid voltage drop to the telescope.

The building has a control room for me and a desktop computer connected to the server in the house by an underground Ethernet line. It's important to keep heat sources such as people and computers away from the telescope, to avoid dome currents. It also means I can have a higher level of lighting and warmth. 

Links (to come)

· About the Observatory’s RCOS 0.41 m Ritchey-Chretien telescope.

· About the Apogee U9 CCD camera

· Observatory and equipment data