Anyone who’s ever observed from a deck is painfully aware that the slightest movement, anywhere on the deck, is enough to cause enough image shake to ruin an image. As such, the pier that supports your telescope must be isolated from the deck or ground that you’re standing and walking on. If you skip this step, you’re sure to have years of frustrated images to look forward to.

Construction of our new home gave me the perfect opportunity to ensure that my observatory rested upon a solid base. While everything was wide open and heavy equipment was on-site, I made sure that my telescope would have a solid foundation. Here, a worker aligns the frames just prior to pouring the concrete for my pier. As you can see, the pier is quite substantial. It measures 2′ x 2′ and was set on a concrete footer poured down below the frost line. This would give me the solid base required for precisely tracking deep sky objects

NOTE: Even having somebody walking by when imaging from your driveway is enough to cause image shake. If you’re planning to image from such a solid location, you’ll want to look into some sort of vibration dampening pads. These are available from a number of locations and will help considerably. You may also want to have some sort of rule that nobody can walk within 5 or 10′ of the scope during imaging sessions. You may cause image shake if you need to be close to your scope to start/stop the image.