After 10000 hours of hard work, more than 10 years from time to time in the garage and about 15000 Euros spent, the Snaefell was ready to ride!
As you can see, the result is really impressive for a work done by an amateur...

The pics are impressive.

Oooo, give it a go!

Do you think you could have written a more inspiring inauguration speech for Barack Obama?
Show us how it’s done…

So you want to look at the stars? Why stop with a old telescope? Why not do what this guy did and build your own observatory?

Excerpt:

Introduction: This page will document the construction of my backyard observatory. This is a project I had wanted to do since the summer of 1975. A variety of factors (mainly cash flow and a suitable location) caused the 30+ year delay in starting this project. I live in a place where (for southern New England anyway) the skies are reasonably dark and I expect to be here long enough to make construction of an observatory a worthwhile undertaking. The photos below will document the progress of observatory construction.

The observatory I built is a roll-off roof type observatory, I decided on dimensions of 8x12. I did not have a set of plans, I kind of just "made things up as I went" (but I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do after doing some basic research and looking at other designs). My budget for this project was around $2500, so that means I am doing nearly all the labor myself. I did purchase most of the construction materials right after the Katrina disaster, mainly to beat the significant increases in material prices caused by this and other storms. Plywood went from $25 a sheet to $31 a sheet in 4 days (I had to make multiple trips on multiple days due to the capacity limitations of my truck).

More information on this frankly amazing project and the stunning results here.