TelescopeMan records the April 2012 meeting of the amateur telescope making special interest group- Texas Astronomical Society. The video was recorded during April 2012 and features two telescope making projects. The first is the 6 inch refractor which has been refurbished by Gary Carter, and the second is the 1960s Criterion EQ mount refurbished by Glenn Fitzgerald.
The ASTRONOMICAL TELESCOPE consists of an OBJECTIVE LENS, whose job is to gather the light from the distant object of interest and to produce a sharply focussed image, and an EYEPIECE, which can be just one lens, but is more usually a couple of lenses. The purpose of the eyepiece is to magnify the image produced by the objective lens. The astronomical telescope, then, is particularly simple. It produces an image that is inverted i.e. everything looks upside-down when viewed through such a telescope. Obviously that doesn't matter when you are looking at the Moon, stars or planets, but it can be a nuisance if you wish to observe heavenly bodies of a quite different nature. Read more See more
Yangzhou Huasheng Optical Instrument Factory Read more
North (Nanjing) Instrument Technology Industries Group Read more
Managed to test the telescope on a few stars, Vega, Arcturus; the stars are crisp. The eyepiece is the lens from an old 8mm cini-camera, and works surprisingly well.
First up, clamp one of the pieces of glass on top of the oil drum, sprinkled with coarse carborundum powder and water, and place the other piece of glass (the one destined to become the final mirror) on top. Now starts the long period of rubbing the two together, at random, while walking round the oil drum. By a miracle of geometry, and the use of successively finer grades of grinding grit, the glass clamped to the drum becomes convex, whilst the piece on top becomes concave. Read more
Want an eye-popping view of the heavens but don't own a high-powered telescope or live near an observatory? Try building your own reflecting telescope. San Francisco-based designer Douglas Smith did just that after taking a course, and ended up creating a 10-foot monster with great optics and portability. Smith took a class at the Randall Museum led by amateur astronomer John Dobson, long known for popularising low-cost reflectors made of plywood and plastic. Read more
Turn an old telelens and a webcam into a powerful telescope that is capable of seeing craters on the moon. Next to the webcam and tele lens all you need are some standard pvc plumbing materials (pipes, diameter adapters and endcaps) Read more