[ATM] Stone observatory foundation?

["Michael Burr" <mtburr@msn.com>]

Greetings:

I haven't posted in a long time; my ATMing has been dormant over the past year while I have concentrated on building our new house. But in the wake of a recent visit by John Dobson, I'm inspired to take up the task again.

One of the projects I have planned is to build an observatory. I'm considering raising the observatory up, maybe 6 feet or more, to get a little more clearance over some trees that border my location. There are a lot of small boulders strewn around, and I am considering building the raised "base" of the observatory from stone and concrete. I am unsure, however, of the thermal properties of stone. I would not want to create a radiative nightmare.

I've searched the ATM list archives and done some poking around on the web, but thus far haven't found any useful guidance. Does anyone on the list know whether stone soaks up and radiates a lot of heat? I'm guessing it does and I am out of luck with it.

Unfortunately I don't know what kind of stone it is. We have a lot of granite around here (central Minnesota) and if I had to guess I'd say maybe it's granite. Definitely it's not a sedimentary rock. It looks metamorphic to me.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Best Regards,
Michael Burr
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