Welcome to Happy Ray Manor (HRM) Observatory. HRM Observatory is a 12' square roll-off roof structure housing a wedge mounted Meade 12" LX200GPS UHTC telescope on a permanent pier, located 6 miles south of Owensville, Missouri, USA. As a long time user of various telescopes from urban areas I always had to setup and take down my telescope at the beginning and ending of each evening of observing. Now that I have an Observatory I can leave my telescope setup as well as all of the support equipment. With a 700 foot walk from the house to the observatory, I can be looking through the eyepiece in 10 minutes. If you are contemplating building an observatory for your telescope, by all means, build it. The structure took 6 weeks to build working on the weekends and I spend close to 30 hours a month observing and taking pictures with 0 hours spent with setup and teardown of equipment.

I have been an amateur telescope maker since 1974. I have built a wide variety of telescopes over the years but they always specialized in visual observation of planets and lunar or wide field work. The mountings were made mostly of wood and hardware found at the local ACE Hardware store. I never built telescopes for photography. As a result I missed out on the days of film photography and long hours of manual guiding. I spent my time floating from object to object and found satisfaction with seeing the same old thing.

My family and I moved to Owensville, Missouri in May of 1999 from St. Louis, Missouri. Owensville is a small community of 2500 people located 95 miles West of downtown St. Louis. I live on a 100 acre ranch "Happy Ray Manor". My wife Jackie and I are specialty dog breeders and operate a senior equine rescue facility. Jackie works at American Express Incentive Services in St. Louis as a manager. Peter is a sophomore at St. Louis University High School in St. Louis, Missouri. Louis is a eighth grader at Owensville Middle School.

Astronomy and Telescope Making are my passions. I have discovered that the next step in my hobby is to learn how to incorporate all of the advancements in telescopes available to the amateur with all of the advancements in CCD imaging. I am learning to utilize all of off-the-shelf technology as this observatory slowly evolves as my learning curve takes shape.

You are visitor to this web site since October 14th, 2004

Updated 04-13-2006
Happy Ray Manor Observatory
Copyright 2006
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Webmaster Tim Ray at tim@happyraymanor.com