I’m working on a small personal observatory project that I call Bastion. I live in a tiny village with around 300 people and almost no light pollution. After 23:00 the street lights turn off completely, so the sky here is really dark and perfect for this kind of thing.
The observatory is built around an OpenAstroTracker. I’m using the official community design, I’m not the creator of the model. The tracker is fully assembled and running. The stepper motors, aluminum parts and even the power supply all came from an old Creality 3D printer I had. The same power supply now feeds an MKS 2.1 board and a Raspberry Pi 4 that handles control and tracking. Firmware is set up and everything works smoothly.
The dome is the part I’m most excited about. It’s basically a helmet shaped shell made from sixty PETG segments that I printed on my Bambu A1. The visor isn’t finished yet, but it will be printed separately and mounted on the front. I didn’t design the helmet model either, but I’m combining it with the observatory idea to create something a bit unusual and fun.
The whole thing will sit on a 160 cm concrete pillar inside a small 1.5 by 1.5 meter hut that I’m building next to my garden. The plan is to turn this area into a small nature corner and maybe a tiny camp in the future.
I’m trying to make the dome long lasting, so the PETG parts are coated with Hammerite for UV and weather protection. The structure is modular so I can replace individual pieces over the years. The environment here is quiet, dark and surrounded by trees, so it’s a nice place to work on something like this.
Still a work in progress, but it’s finally starting to look like a real observatory. More updates soon.