COLD SPRING, Ky. — Fred Calvert doesn't have to go far for a view that's out of this world.

Walk out a back door, down a flight of stairs and across the back yard to a building with a dome on top of it. With his wife's blessing, the amateur astronomer designed and built an observatory behind the two-story house where the couple and their two dogs live.

"Spent about three years building it and getting money out of my wife to do it. Don't tell her that," Calvert said with a big laugh. "But, no, she's been supportive of it. I guess I could be out at the bars every night, but she knows where I'm at back here."

A one-time professional photographer and aircraft mechanic, Calvert works at Lunken Airport as director of safety for Executive Jet Management. He's been interested in astronomy since he was 9 years old when he picked up a book on the subject.

"Started reading it, started comparing the little star charts with the stars out in front of my house," Calvert said. "When I got in high school, my parents had died and I lived with my cousins, and they had a little spotting scope. I was out in our backyard there and pointed it at the moon and you could see everything. Between those two things, they were the things that kind of got me."

Calvert, now 54, said he didn't get seriously interested until about 15 years ago when he bought a small, eight-inch telescope. A move from Fort Thomas to a Cold Spring subdivision about eight years ago offered Calvert enough space, and darkness, to take his hobby to another level.

To build a backyard observatory, Calvert said he had to obtain the necessary permits before starting construction in March 2003. The observatory cost about $8,000 to build and is divided into two rooms.

The control room features creature comforts like heating and air conditioning, and a mini refrigerator. It also houses a corner desk, three computers and monitors. Decorations include a small replica R2-D2 atop an end table and starry images on the walls.

The telescope room, accessed through an interior door, houses a 10-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope for deep-sky imaging and a computer connected to the three in the control room. The dome rests on wheels and rotates by tugging on a length of braided rope.

Calvert uses the computers in the control room to control the telescope and digital camera, process images, browse the Internet and watch TV. The computer in the telescope room helps him frame an image and focus the camera. Calvert also has the capability of controlling telescopes around the world that are available to rent through the computers in his home observatory.

"We did see it go up step-by-step. A little bit more this week. A little more that week," neighbor Holly Cetrulo said. "When he was telling us about it, 'It's going to be an observatory,' I was like, 'OK.' I didn't really get it. You have to see it to believe it, to get the full impact of just how cool this is, just how far he's gone with it."

Calvert studied astro-photography at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and images from his Cold Spring observatory have appeared in various publications. Several of his images grace a 2010 calendar, "Deep Sky Treasures," presented by the Cincinnati Observatory Center and the Xavier University Center for Excellence in Education.

Calvert said he belongs to the Cincinnati Observatory's research group, and his main interest is searching two particular galaxies for supernovae. Astronomy and astro-photography, he said, are a marriage of his two professional interests.

"It's really taking two very separate disciplines, both which I've done professionally, and putting them together," Calvert said. "So it's like taking my two careers and sticking them together and doing something fun. Doing fun science."

The home observatory helps Calvert share that enthusiasm with others, like the Cetrulos.

"That's the only telescope of that power that I've ever looked through," Holly Cetrulo said. "Awe-inspiring is the only thing I can think of. It just takes your breath away standing there looking at the rings of Saturn, getting an up-close look of the craters on the moon. It's quite an experience."



Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.