A 1 cubic metre hole was dug out and the work was started in May 2015.

Millie noticed that a large hole had appeared at the end of the garden and decided that it needed looking into.

Millie thought that the hole needed further investigation!

Supporting frame in place and checked with spirit level. Garden spade shown for scale.

Arrival of 2.5 tonnes of aggregate and bags of cement. We had to go back the the builders merchant for more that day.

Electric cement mixer, wheel barrow and supply of water was all that was needed. The operation took several hours to complete…

… before the final skimming coat of cement mix could be added and levelled out with the top of the support frame.

The surface was then verified as being completely level in both directions prior to mounting the telescope pier.

The pier (below) weighs in at about 60 kg and is constructed using 8mm wall thickness steel tube and plate.

The concrete was allowed to cure for a period of about 10 days.

The next stage was to align the pier with the pole star. This was archived by making a dummy pier base plate which held a vertical ‘sun dial’ at its centre. A solar noon table was used to establish the exact time of day that the sun dial shadow (cloudless sky!) would point to the position of the pole star, such that the bolt holes in the pier base could then be marked on the concrete, prior to drilling  

The pier is attached to the base with four 200 mm long studs which have been resined into the concrete.

The accuracy of the mount levelling was verified using the telescope wedge built in spirit bubble. The wedge horizontal alignment error has used only only 1/6 of the available horizontal adjustment after alignment of the telescope with the pole star.  

Polar alignment now takes only a fraction of the time compared to that spent when the scope was tri-pod mounted.

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Construction of the telescope pier May to June 2015