Albireo Observatory is the culmination of my dream of having a domed observatory to pursue my love of astronomy. I've used metal sheds, plastic sheds and no sheds at all, until I was able to purchase an eight-foot diameter Exploreadome some fifteen years ago. I was very happy to have it, but it was quite cramped inside for someone as tall as I am, so when the opportunity came along to buy a large metal dome, I jumped at it. However, it's taken me thirteen years to get to a point and place in time to be able to build it. And now is that time.

The Dome

The observatory's twelve-and-a-half foot diameter Galavalume dome was manufactured by Lancaster Domes back in the 1990's or early 2000's. They are now out of business, but I was told it was a prototype for a dome built for one of their big customers. It has never been fully assembled until now, and only the two were ever manufactured. I purchased it in January of 2012, but had it stored until we purchased the land in 2021. This dome is a modified silo dome and appears to be closely modeled on an Ash Dome. As a matter of fact, it is so close to an Ash Dome that I'm using one of their manuals to assemble it. However, Lancaster did take some liberties with the execution, which has required a bit of head scratching now and again. Part of my problem may be that this dome is simply older than the manual I'm using and some things have changed over the years.