i was wondering what materials would i need to set up the elementary telescope. as well as how most income would it cost.
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5 Responses to “BUILDING A HOME-MADE TELESCOPE?”
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February 21st, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Why bother building a telescope? These days, you can get a quality telescope that is ready to go inexpensively.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:27 am
Fifty years ago, it used to be very common for people to make their own telescopes. Nowadays it has become very rare, because commercial telescopes have become relatively inexpensive. One result of this is that it is very hard to find the parts needed to build your own scope. Unless you have a very strong motivation to learn how to do this, and to track down the parts needed, I wouldn’t recommend building your own scope. Because the parts are hard to find, they are very expensive, and a home made telescope will cost many times more than a commercially built telescope. Labour is so much cheaper in China where almost all telescopes are made nowadays.
February 26th, 2010 at 6:47 am
It’s a great experience making a mirror! Get a 55-gallon drum, fill it with water, make your wooden mount and start grinding!
One of the best kits are Willmann-Bell’s and they sell excellent guidebooks:
Some ATM’s (Amateur Telescope Makers) have used porthole glass but it’s sensitive to temperature changes (unlike Pyrex, which was invented for telescope optics). The famous John Dobson invented the Dobsonian mount for his porthole mirrors because he was on a strict budget.
Commercial optics are rarely as good as homemade. Some amateur projects have produced incredible telescopes.
PS: I once tested a homemade 18-inch mirror for a friend, it had defects (turned edge, zonal defect and depressed center). He bought it anyway, mounted it in a big Dobsonian and gave me the best view of M-51 I ever saw.
February 26th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Well you can and thousands of folks have. But like Jim says, why? Good quality scopes are cheaper in the long run. However, if you want to build something custom, you certainly can. The ATM’s (Amateur Telescope Markers) still make a wide variety of scopes, just for the pleasure of doing it.
March 1st, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Now THERE’S a question! And you happen to have the right guy here to answer it! I have personally built a 10 inch Newtonian reflector basically from scratch. I painstakingly ground the main reflecting mirror to specs from a solid glass disk blank with Carborundum powders of many grits an dies to progressively form the shape necessary all taking hundreds of man hours walking while grinding by hand around a steel 55 gallon drum in my garage for thousands of times around it. No fun at all!
I assume you ask about a telescope of modest dimensions and cost, perhaps something you could easily hold and use in your hands?
I could bore you for hours with instructions, but I will instead let you in on a great website and if it doesn’t have what you need it will have links to others that in all certainty will be of great usage to you.
Enjoy, and keep alive your interest in observing the skies!