Flying through Telescope Domes!

Sterreman Willie · Apr 16, 2021

Towards the end of last year, we built a new telescope dome at our national Observatory in South Africa (see the fully narrated video linked in the endscreen).
We since had two more trips to finish it off with the highlights shown in the first half of this video, using pictures and time-lapse.
The last half is drone footage which includes flying in through the door, inside and out of the dome slit again. Since the Spark did not always behave too well inside the dome (despite switching off obstacle avoidance and it obviously lost GPS too), I shot some footage with the Spark handheld, but it is amazing how gentle one must pan the drone to avoid jerky movements.
This was just a quick (still unlisted) video to show the Americans what we did - I'll still add some narration and descriptions and release a proper video later.
https://youtu.be/qfD5KY0OeDs

SPark_South_Oz · Apr 16, 2021

Nice engineering !
Tell me, why so many domes though, all with different types of telescopes, or building them for others to be finished, tested, dismantle and shipped out ?

NOLADG · Apr 16, 2021

Sterreman Willie said:
but it is amazing how gentle one must pan the drone to avoid jerky movements.

Yes. I once used my Spark as a handheld camera, but was quite disappointed in the movements. I guess this is where a three axis gimbal really pays off. I have used my Mavic Air in the same way with smooth footage.

Neat video and project.

Sterreman Willie · Apr 16, 2021

SPark_South_Oz said:
Nice engineering !
Tell me, why so many domes though, all with different types of telescopes, or building them for others to be finished, tested, dismantle and shipped out ?

Thanks. All the different domes contain telescopes doing different jobs/observations and belong to different institutions. Some are manned, but most are fully robotic. None are there for testing - we don't manufacture any domes, we are the end users.

DavidBlezard · Apr 17, 2021

Sterreman Willie said:
Towards the end of last year, we built a new telescope dome at our national Observatory in South Africa (see the fully narrated video linked in the endscreen).
We since had two more trips to finish it off with the highlights shown in the first half of this video, using pictures and time-lapse.
The last half is drone footage which includes flying in through the door, inside and out of the dome slit again. Since the Spark did not always behave too well inside the dome (despite switching off obstacle avoidance and it obviously lost GPS too), I shot some footage with the Spark handheld, but it is amazing how gentle one must pan the drone to avoid jerky movements.
This was just a quick (still unlisted) video to show the Americans what we did - I'll still add some narration and descriptions and release a proper video later.
https://youtu.be/qfD5KY0OeDs

awesome photography and very interesting project. Thanks for sharing.