A lot of construction is taking place out around the lakes area, but one project is a little bit different than the rest. Dr. Robert Low is in the process of constructing Arrakis Observatory into the middle of his lake home.

Dr. Low is a radiologist and a partner of Diagnostic Radiologic Imaging. He purchased the lake home five years ago.

As for his celestial hobby, Low says he needed something new to keep him busy. Since high school he has been interested in electronics. Building devices such as cars and airplanes, he soon got interested in more elaborate things like the audio/video aspect of it. Their home in Plymouth has a custom home theatre that Low built into it. The doctor also has an all-band radio with seven antennas in the attic. He receives weather satellite photos and has a 3-D animation set-up equipped with software that is used to make full feature animation movies.

Two years ago Low received an astronomy catalog in the mail and that got him interested in the stars.  "Astrophotography was an irresistible draw," he states. With plans to make the lake home larger, Low figured why not go a little further and put in an observatory on the roof. He did research on the Internet and found hundreds of private observatories and amateur stuff to look at.

With the help of Don Ebbinga, who is well known around here for his skillful planning and carpentry, the observatory was taking shape. A roof was designed that will rise up over the telescopes that will be mounted inside.

A soil specialist inspected the ground under where the concrete pier, that will hold the telescopes, to make sure it was solid and wouldn't cause it to shift or sway.

Haecherl Construction began work on the house and a heavy concrete block was poured under the pier area. The stiff pier will feel no vibrations from the house. The observatory will have no air exchange with the house, it has it's own heating and cooling and is isolated from the main structure.

A control room will be under the observatory so there will be virtually no need to go up into the observatory. Four video cameras will be present in the observatory. These video signals will be distributed to a network camera server, thus allowing the pictures to be received over a dial-up connection or over the Internet on a Java script on his website. A remotely controllable pan/tilt /zoom camera will be in place to monitor the mount, scope and roof conditions as well as the outside weather conditions, such as temperature, humidity and rain sensor readouts.

When all equipment is in place, hopefully by January, Low will be able to access his observatory from anywhere in the world, just by dialing in and connecting. He can watch the stars from his home in Plymouth on the Internet or on his television screen. Low will be able to first check the weather outside of the observatory before raising the roof, which is being constructed by Larson Welding and Machine of Slayton.

"The biggest challenge is putting it all together," he says, "These things have all been done individually before." Low tells me that the lake home is the perfect place for an observatory. The atmosphere is usually steady near lakes, although he did comment that it can get quite windy around here. He's also thinking about snow and installing some sort of heating device on the roof.

Low is documenting his adventure on the Internet. Donna Larson put together a wonderful website for him. You can access his documentation on www.arrakis.cc and watch the progress of the observatory.

I had a tour of the construction site and it is quite an adventure in the making. When all is finished everyone will be able to enjoy the stars through his website. Dr. Low is truly reaching for the stars.