I have had an ongoing problem with birds nesting in my observatory roof housing. It usually happens in the Spring and generally there are baby birds, so I let the babies grow up and then clean it out. This year I waited until a couple of weeks ago to clear it out. Then, when I am up by the observatory yesterday, I hear birds in the housing! That early move-in was the last straw. So now I believe there will be no more birds.

Here is a wide view of the Observatory. You can see the motor housing just under the upper roof.

In this view of the Observatory you can see the motor housing on the wall below the upper roof.

The problem is that there are two openings in the motor housing, allowing the birds to get it. I really don’t blame them as it is a very secure location for a nest. This picture shows the opening on the top which is the main entry point the blackbirds that were hanging out there yesterday.

The top of the observatory motor housing allows birds to enter and nest.

So, what is the solution? I carefully measured the dimensions of the opening. I made a paper model of a covering the the opening that would allow the chains to move freely but not have any opening large enough for a bird (I hope). I then cut that shape out of some 1/8 inch rubber sheeting.

Carefully cut rubber sheeting to cover the opening.

Here is the rubber sheeting over the opening. I believe the chain can move freely, although I have not tested it. It is easy enough to remove if needed.

The rubber sheeting covers the opening while still allowing the roof to operate.

I then took several pieces of wood and a large rubber strap to secure it in place. A little make-shift, but I believe it is effective.

The final fix in place with some wood to hold down the sheeting and a strap to keep it in place.

The rubber strap also holds a piece of wood over the hole on the bottom of the motor housing. All in all, it looks fairly neat from the outside.

The hole on the bottom of the housing is also now covered.

I hope I have solved the bird problem for the long-term. I expect the birds to keep trying, so we will see if my solution works. I also need to see how well it stands up to the Sun and the weather. It shouldn’t get a lot of direct Sun as it is on the north side of the building. But it will get rain and will get heat.

UPDATE: The damn birds managed to push the wood holding one side away so they could get in again. I added a second rubber strap and tightened the first.

I added another strap. I hope this keeps them out.

The pictures for this post were taken with my Pixel phone camera and processed with the new Adobe Lightroom CC. All but the wide picture were edited on my iPad. A first for mobile photo processing.

I am in the process of installing a new computer in my observatory. It is never fun going through the mass of software installations, etc. that accompany replacing what was a smoothly operating system. I’m replacing the old PC, which I built from parts from an even older PC I used at home, because the BIOS stopped saving its settings. It is probably the battery on the motherboard, but after 7 or so years it is time for an upgrade.

I bought a new HP Envy Windows 10 64-bit machine at Costco. All the installations (The Sky, Maxim DL, PinPoint, ASCOM, etc.) seemed to go fine at home. But I ran into problems with ASCOM when I was setting up the PC in the observatory and checking connectivity. When I tried to connect to the mount from Maxim DL, ASCOM brought up an error window and then did not have an mounts to select. The Astro-Physics setup program worked fine and connected to the mount. I ran the ASCOM diagnostics program, which reported that it had “Completed function testing run: 1559 matches, 2 fail(s), 5 exception(s).” It was not at all clear what the issues were.

So I ran the installer and repaired the installation. That did not change anything, I was still getting the same errors. The ASCOM Profile Explorer also brought up error messages and then didn’t work. I then ran the Profile Explorer as an administrator. And it worked. Running Maxim as an administrator also worked. Running as administrator, however, is not a good long-term solution.

So I went to the ASCOM Yahoo! Group (it is linked from the ASCOM Support page) and searched there. Success! I found a thread with my exact problem and, after figuring out Yahoo! Groups navigation, found a solution. Apparently the installer did not set permissions properly on a certain registry key. Here is what to do, taken from the wonderful people on that Yahoo! thread. But be careful, editing the registry can kill your computer.

1. Run Regedit (hit the Window key, type “run”, hit enter, enter “regedit”, hit enter, agree to changes)
2. Back up the registry (File > Export, select a place to save and a name)
3. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node (Note these instructions are for 64-bit Windows)
4. Right click on ASCOM and select “Permissions” You may be prompted to allow Regedit to reorder the permissions, that is OK
5. Scroll to the bottom of the list of groups and select “Users”
6. Make sure the box next to “Full Control” is checked and click OK
7. Close Regedit and you should be good to go

In looking back, there are a couple of places where I could have found the error in the diagnostic and installation logs.

At the bottom of the installation logs, there is a section that starts with “Error List.” Two lines below it is this message, which points directly to the error:

Error RegistrySecurity - Subkey SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ASCOM does not have full access rights for BUILTIN\Users!

There is also this section in the diagnostic log that points out the problem:

12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have CreatorOwnerGenericAccess!
12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have SystemGenericAccess!
12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have SystemSpecificAccess!
12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have AdministratorGenericAccess!
12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have AdministratorSpecificAccess!
12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have UserGenericAccess!
12:01:08.912 ScanEventLog 12/29/2016 11:43:45 AM ASCOM Platform Error 24 FinaliseInstall - Exception HKCR\ does not have UserSpecificAccess!

The Finalize Install log has these entries, which also point to the problem.

11:43:45.810 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have CreatorOwnerGenericAccess!
11:43:45.811 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have SystemGenericAccess!
11:43:45.812 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have SystemSpecificAccess!
11:43:45.812 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have AdministratorGenericAccess!
11:43:45.813 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have AdministratorSpecificAccess!
11:43:45.814 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have UserGenericAccess!
11:43:45.814 CheckHKCRPermissions HKCR\ does not have UserSpecificAccess!


My sincere thanks to the ASCOM Yahoo! Group contributors. I have memorialized their advice here so that it might be helpful to someone else.

Last week there was a magnitude 5.4 earthquake northwest of Borrego Springs and east of Lake Riverside. It was only 25 miles from our house and the observatory. I was worried about the roof of the observatory jumping the rails.

During construction, there was a lot of discussion on how to protect the roof in windy conditions. We never thought about earthquakes which are probably a greater risk for a 3,000 lb roof. Nonetheless, we devised a good hold down mechanism for the roof, with steel flanges preventing any full derailment at virtually all open positions. The upshot of this protection is that we did not provide for any tie down of the roof.

Upon hearing of the earthquake, I became concerned that the shaking might derail the roof. While we had dealt with a move from the wind, I was concerned that the quake might have introduced movement we hadn’t anticipated.

All is well. As far as a nighttime inspection can find, we have no earthquake effect, let alone damage. It’s a good thing we didn’t take any lava home from Hawaii, so Pe’Lee is on our side.

After much waiting, the opener mechanism has been installed on the roof. At the press of a button, I can open the roof. The opener is an industrial vertical door opener. The roof is quite heavy, I would estimate at least 2,000 lbs, so getting the roof moving takes quite a bit of torque. I know from moving the roof manually, that once it is moving, it moves fairly smoothly, but starting it takes quite a shove. With the motor, it moves quite smoothly, fully opening in about a minute. The motor does have a chain-operated backup in case power is out or the motor is not operational.

Here is a wide shot of the whole set-up. The opener is attached to the observatory wall, and the track was welded onto the opener beam. There are some finish details to be completed. The track will be enclosed in a shroud of roof metal and the motor cover will be painted to match the walls.

This shot shows the detail of the motor and attachment to the roof. The chain set-up is bolted to the roof, attaching into the steel studs under the roofing material.

Unfortunately, we had thick high clouds all weekend, so there was no astronomy. But opening the roof was pretty cool!

After much planning, regulatory hurdles, over seven months of construction, and one item still pending, the new observatory has seen first light. Last Wednesday I put the mount and NP-101 into the observatory and viewed the sky. I aligned the scope with no issue. My rough alignment of the pier adapter was almost spot on.

The viewing was good, but not excellent that night as the transparency was not very good. M27 was the first object I viewed. The shape was quite clear in the eyepiece. The Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula together in the 41mm Panoptic eyepiece were absolutely amazing. The Omega Nebula around M17 was great. Faint and small objects like the Cocoon Nebula or the Veil Nebula were not visible. It was great not to be bothered by the incoming light from the few security lights in the valley or the lights of passing cars.

I set up the imaging equipment on Thursday, but smoke from fires in Santa Barbara county (200+ miles away!) made serious imaging impossible. I did get the equipment working and that was a good expenditure of time. I started working with ACP observatory automation software on Friday. It took several hours to get through the set-up, and I ran into some issues in the wee hours of the morning, but again, very good progress in getting the observatory fully operational. It got quite cool on Thursday night, into the upper 40s by the time I went to bed, so being able to work in the warm room was a major advantage.

We had guests on Saturday, and Art and Tod wanted to see the observatory in action, and agreed that we could image and argue with the software rather than view. We still had some issues with the observatory control software, but solved some of them and the others are likely some configuration I have wrong at this point. We successfully captured 30 minutes of data of the Deer Lick Group and Stephan’s Quintet galaxy clusters in Pegasus. Color imaging would have kept us up too late so we settled for a nice black and white image. Click on the image to go to the gallery where you can see a larger version.

This first light milestone comes after almost all the work has been completed. The desk is in the warm room and we are just waiting on the automation for the roof. Here is a view looking into the observatory from the warm room with the new desk in the foreground.

This shows the scope and mount with imaging equipment attached. The mount can carry a lot more weight than I have on it now. In fact, because the scope is small, the camera runs into the mount as the scope points close to the zenith. I may piggyback the NP-101 seen here on my C-11. That would put things at the upper end of the weight range but would also move the imaging train up and away from hitting the mount when it points to the zenith.

Great progress has been made and I am looking forward to getting things automated. The roof is quite heavy and can be manually moved, but motorization will be a good thing. And while I don’t plan to image remotely, automation will allow me to get a full night’s worth of data and a full night’s worth of sleep.