- The Sign of the Ox

Observatory pictures:
      The beginning
      Day 1 of construction
      More day 1
      Day 2 of construction
      Day 3 of construction
      Day 4 Finished!
      Fixing it up!
      Mounting my scope
      Finishing touches
      Some landscaping
      Wildlife
      3/31/07
      4/15/2007
      4/21/2007
      5/6/2007
      5/12/2007
      5/19-21/2007
      Memorial Day 2007
      6/10/2007
      6/24/2007
      7/29/2007
      8/11/2007
      9/7/2007
      9/22/2007
      10/2007 StarParty

Early pictures of DAV here,  here,  here,  here   here and  here

Email:
TaurusObservatory@comcast.net
IM:
Yahoo: TaurusObservatory

This website is hosted on a tiny Parallax Pink webserver which resides at the observatory. It's connected to a BOE board with a BasicStamp 24P microcontroller with a Sensirion Temp/Humidity sensor which is providing the temperature and humidity information.

I control the AC power on 16 different devices by the use of 2 DLI Web Power Switches

Eventually I would like to make this observatory completely usable from a remote location and perhaps even fully automated. Think of the observatory as just a big (expensive) robot!

I'm using a iMAC PC in my control room with external monitor to talk to my telescope and camera server and the other computers in the observatory. My main server is a "headless" Compaq server running Vista (yuck). It's main function is to control both the Meade LX200GPS telescope and CCD camera. I use a Toshiba laptop in the observing area when I'm first setting up the telescope and camera and to run a webcamera and other misc. things. I'm starting to experiment with an ACER Aspire One Netbook to control the new Celestron C11 scope and CGE mount.