My Secondary Roll-off Roof Over My Observing Deck

A while back I added an 8x8 foot observing deck to the side of my roll-off roof observatory.
It became apparent that more needed to be done to make it useable year round (as we have a lot of snow in the winter months that even make moving the main observatory roof nearly impossible to move.)
After much thought (and a few trips to my local Ace Hardware store) this is what I came up with.
Positioning this new roll-off roof under the supporting beams that hold up the main observatory roll-off roof, I was able to construct this for about $225 for materials.
I am not a carpenter or a mechanic (nor am I an athlete) so the plan was simple as was the construction and the operation.
Perhaps you will get some ideas from my project and make your own without having to spend $1,000 to do it!
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me in the "comment" section below.

A Brief Imaging Session of the Moon and 3 Galaxies

The Moon - nearly full - March 17, 2019

Due to the brightness of the Moon I selected a few galaxies that were sufficiently far away in the sky from the Moon:

M 81, M 82 and tiny NGC 3077 (can you find the smudge?)

Here is the imaging data for the Moon shot:

• Scope: Daystar 500mm f/6
• Camera: Canon T3i unmodded
• Exposure: ISO 100 1/400 sec
• Post-processing programs used:RawTherapee, GIMP, Mac Preview

Here is the imaging data for the three galaxies shot:

• Scope: Daystar 500mm f/6
• Camera: Canon T3i unmodded
• Exposure: ISO 3200 - ave. 15 sec each
• Stacked: 87 frames = about 21 minutes total (plus 4 darks and 3 flats)
• Post-processing programs used:DeepSkyStacker, RawTherapee, GIMP, Mac Preview

The First Clear Sky in 20 days! Result: The Rosetta Nebula!

The Rosetta Nebula

Daystar 480mm f/5 telescope

Canon T3i camera at prime focus UNMODDED

ISO 3200

Total integration time: 51 minutes (18 frames)

Wiki info:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosette_Nebula

For the first time in 20 days I was able to open the observatory and do some imaging. The temp at 8:45 pm Sunday night was 24*F. By the time I ended (1 am Monday morning) the temp had dropped to 10*F ! Glad for my obs "warm room" where it was 43*F. Here are is the "best of the night" image with DeepSkyStacker: The Rosetta Nebula!

The good news here is that I was able, despite the deep cold temps, to get a few 6 and 5 minute "subs" (photos that are part of a stack of images in DeepSkyStacker 4.1.1). These longer exposures capture more photons and thus makes post-processing much more productive.