The introduction
Hi, I'm Mark Baines. My wife Jane, Katie our daughter, and myself live in the Highlands of
Scotland.
Over the next pages I give extensive details of how this observatory was built. I make no
apology for the amount of content. Some of you looking at this site will be interested in building
something like it yourself. When I was looking for ideas I was often disappointed by how little detail
there was on the web. Being inexperienced in such matters I needed that amount of detail and in the end I
spent an awful long time working it all out for myself. I hope this site saves you some time.
The Linnhe Observatory, myself and Katie (now an heroic nurse!)
OK, truth be told, I wanted a dome. They keep all extraneous light out, are wind-proof
(very important here as I live on the coast and there is nearly always a wind) and they are sexy! I know
some people say that they like to see the whole sky, well most of the small domes allow you to stand in
the slot and look up. I put an order in with the only guy I could find in the UK who was making them but
after very long delays, unreturned phone calls and eventually a lost deposit (he did a runner!) I gave up
on the idea until I saw that Broadhurst Clarkson & Fuller
(now Telescope House) in London had started making them. But the price was too much, I just couldn't justify well over £4000
for what was in essence several panels of fibreglass. So I decided to build one myself - no easy decision,
I'd not done anything like this before.
However, that's jumping ahead a couple of years. First I built a pier and a concrete pad to
mount the dome on.
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