Foudre/Lightning Strike takes out observatory

[The Thing]

Hi all,

This is a cautionary tale, you are much more likely to be hit by lightning than win the lottery so take heed.

One dark night while everyone was asleep a small tempest blew in and there was a great wind and a bit of thunder. Distant flashes lit the night sky. The streetlamps glowed.

Then a brilliant flash with a humongous simultaneous crash of thunder made me jump off the mattress - and it wasn't just me. It was a very near miss. It took out the satellite dish LNB (the receiver bit), that was connected to the satellite tuner which was connected to the lovely big TV which were both connected to the network which was connected to the ADSL router which was connected to the observatory via a USB3 hub device which was connected to another USB3 hub at the scope which was connected to the guide camera and the mount. Fried.

On the plus side it took out our 5 streetlamps and I had enough gear to set up a different mount and image in total darkness for 4 nights! They are still not repaired 3 weeks later - I hope they never will be! Also my laptop, Canon DSLR, (in the observatory), desktop, another TV/satellite tuner, two routers and a few other bits and bobs weren't affected. And the boiler still worked (bigger motherboard in it than my desktop!).

Anyway I've just about replaced everything now - nearly £1000 - and added surge protected plugs and gadgets to the satellite feed which should earth any future surges. I'm also going to install good old fashioned ferrite cores (the lumps you see on some computer cables) on all cables as this can provide cheap and effective spike protection. The best protection of course  is unplug everything if a storm is forecast.

[Fay]

Its a bad time you have gone thru Duncan........

[Carole]

Wow, lucky you weren't in the obsy at the time.  Are you insured for this sort of thing?

Carole

[Rick]

Not much will protect kit from a very close strike, but it's worth arranging for stuff that's high to have static bled from it to stop it looking like too good a target. We had one at work years back. It hit the end of the building by the internal phone exchange (that dates it a bit). The BT engineers ended up taking the exchange out pretty much card by card, and replacing every one. A whole lot of computer kit (mostly stuff connected by RS232 serial links, so that dates it, too) also lost its magic smoke, some of it a few days later when it was switched back on.

With a bit of luck the street lights may have taken the main hit...