Welcome to Ga-Lun-La-Ti Observatory! I'm glad you found your way to my strange part of the universe. Click the links above or on the left to see more of the site.

Construction

Introduction
     OK, so this has taken me way longer than I thought to start and way longer than I thought to complete.  I started dreaming about building one of these when I was a teenager.  Military, jobs, marriage and kids came along and I finally got to start it when I was 43.  I took delivery of the Explora-Dome in 2007 and then proceeded to deal with a series of health issues that pretty much took away any energy I had to work on the building.  We finally figured out the problem and I got the gumption to build the building.  

     The observatory is currently dried in and the scope is installed.   I still have a bunch of paint and trim and control system work to do but at least I'm finally in a position to enjoy my dome.

The dream
            Like most amateur astronomers, after 30+ years of viewing, I got a little tired of dragging and setting up scopes every time I wanted to view.   It wasn’t so bad for just normal viewing since I liked being outside at night anyway but then the imaging bug bit and I found it harder and harder to find the time to set everything up and still have time left to image.  When our kids were born that pretty much sealed the deal and my wife and I decided that the time had come to build an observatory.

The current location
            Our current home is a small house in an area with covenants that will allow us to build but we also have a major power plant within eyesight so the light pollution is far from ideal.  We also have a few trees to deal with and the ever present yard light from neighbors.  Still, we felt that the light shielding of the dome coupled with the sensitivity of the CCDs would make it worth while.  I spend a fair amount of time viewing from the yard anyway and the dome could only help with stray light.  Our hope is to move within the next few years to a better location so we decided to build the observatory to be disassembled and taken with us when the time comes.  With that in mind, we decided it was a go.

Click on the links below to see pics of each component...

 Pier

 Dome

 Building    Building Page2    Building Page 3

 Scope

 Cameras

 Control system