Yeah I’m really twelve meters tall. LOL
FTR, I did reply to @hatsnp’s question privately, assuming numerous paragraphs of semi-technical discussion might be off-topic…
Wait, that’s what we discuss here… in the random comments thread in the Lounge forum.
Oh well… 
It was actually a kit. I provided the optics (from another scope) and the vendor provided CNC routed high quality Baltic Birch parts to fit, along with the hardware necessary to mount the optics, etc. Then lots of quality time with slow-cure epoxy, sanding and varnishing. Ended up with quite a nice telescope.
Oh, neat! Makes me want to pour a pad in the back yard for one. Would be better in the south-facing front yard, but my wife would have none of that… 
Smithsonian Photo Contest winners have been announced. Sorry if this was put up somewhere else, a search did not return anything.
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/archive/2025/
A nice level grassy knoll (or something like that 
) would be better than a heat-absorbing / heat-radiating concrete pad. More stable air means more stable images.
My back yard isn’t great anyway, house on the south and a climbing ridge with another house on top really limits the view. Add this to my fantasy list with ‘barndominium’ in the boonies…
So a tower with viewing platform it is.
Like a big eye in the sky, sort of thing? Maybe with a cosy non-blue bit of light for when you need to adjust things but you don’t want to bugger up your night vision?
Lemme talk to my wife about that… 
There’s precedent. When I was in Omaha, Neb., heard of* a farmer in nearby Iowa who’d acquired a retired Forest Service watch tower, one from which they’d watch for forest fires. He set it up on his farm, put a telescope in it and ran an extension from his phone line to the top. He’d go up there, use the telescope to surveil the surrounding area; if he saw one of his neighbors he’d call them, saying “I’m watching you…”
Wife was probably doing dishes in the farmhouse, shaking her head…
*I have absolutely no idea if this was true.
Does anyone have/know of microscopic images of the on-sensor phase-AF sensors our modern cameras have?
My Google fu didn’t turn any up.
