Erected February 28, 2005 - A permanent pier observatory mounted on our back patio in Mountainbrook Village. The pier is a 6 inch steel pipe 44 inches length, with flanges, made by a local machine shop over in Apache Junction. The aluminum base plate is from the previous observatory in Cave Creek. I simply gave the plate to the machine shop to match the bolt pattern.

The telescope is a Takahashi FS102 (New Short Version), a 4 inch APO refractor mounted on a Celestron CI700 mount. The smaller scope is an Orion ST80 (3.1" refractor). Attached to the ST80 is an SBIG ST-402ME ccd camera which is used as an autoguider. The main camera, attached to the Takahashi, is the Canon 20D digital SLR. The camera is controlled from the PC using ImagesPlus software, from Mike Unsold.

Note 21-MAR-2007, see Peralta Trails Observatory gallery.