| ▲ | Wallace the 6 inch f/2.8 telescope, building it, and hiking with it(lucassifoni.info) |
| 93 points by chantepierre 4 days ago | 18 comments |
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| ▲ | zonkerdonker 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Very cool project and video documentation, really inspiring! As someone who is mechanically inclined and has a decent amount of tools/3D printer, is there any DIY telescope that you would recommend to build as a first foray into the field? I've never done much with optics, and after reading through a few of your posts, it looks both incredibly challenging and very rewarding. |
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| ▲ | chantepierre 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | To me, there are two models that stand out from the crowd : - The Hadley, a 4"1/2 f/9 dobsonian telescope, which is a smaller aperture but easy to build and to find optics for, and very mature : https://www.printables.com/model/224383-astronomical-telesco... - The "open smallest telescope" from a friend, which I show here, a foldable 6inch f5 dobsonian : https://lucassifoni.info/blog/2025-best-6-inch-f5-150-750-po... and can be found on Printables : https://www.printables.com/model/1325533-ost-open-smallest-t... Both are very cool projects, the smallest shows more for deep sky but costs a bit more in optics, and the Hadley has a very mature community. | |
| ▲ | giantg2 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just go down the rabbit hole like I have over the past year... Find thick glass on Facebook, build a cutting jig, build a kiln to fuse it, etc. I'm still planning to build an 18". | |
| ▲ | bluGill 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How into this will you get? If you just want to make your own a small telescope is easiest (see the other reply). As things get large expenses go up. Commercial lens are cheap for smaller telescopes, but as you get to large that becomes the cost and so making your own is the only way you can afford it. If you want a large telescope you should again start making a small one, but this time making your own lens - even though it isn't cost effective to make your own lens (vs buy), the experience means you have a chance to make a larger one (and finish, most people who set out to make one large telescope never finish, those set out to make a small and then a large are more likely to finish both). If you just want to see the stars, goodwill often has telescopes cheap. A refactor can see more than your eye. (or even the binoculars you likely already have!). And the bigger reflectors are seen once in a while. | |
| ▲ | GloriousKoji an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I built a Hadley 114 over the course of 3 weekends and I highly enjoyed it. Amazon has a convenient 2 piece mirror kit you can buy. The rest of the parts (springs, screws, rods) can be acquired anywhere and the stand can be as complex or as simple as you want. |
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| ▲ | mybbor 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Love this. Thanks for sharing. My friend and I pulled an old Dobsonian telescope of my Dad's from the garage when we were teenagers. We spent hours and hours out with it under the stars, and on cloudy nights I would read a book about telescope construction. Back then, cabinet makers were building the most impressive wood frames. Interesting to see how the technology has changed. |
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| ▲ | dylan604 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > cabinet makers were building the most impressive wood frames You say impressive, but my mind reads that as heavy even if they looked amazing | | |
| ▲ | mybbor an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yeah! I meant impressive more in the “big sturdy woodwork” sense, not lightweight. They had to hold a heavy mirror and still move smoothly enough to aim by hand. The Dobsonian design, plus Teflon on Formica bearings, made big aperture amateur telescopes way more accessible to hobbyists. From what I gathered it was definitely a “bigger is better” kind of thing, and weight seemed pretty secondary. |
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| ▲ | rom16384 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Quite an impressive build. How hard is it to collimate the telescope? Does it hold the collimation? |
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| ▲ | chantepierre 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hi ! It is quite easy, with 2 tilt screws at the secondary cage, and the primary cell floats on three heavy duty springs. I can shake it and nothing moves, this is my first criteria. I collimate with a cheshire tool but always finish on a star at medium power (since this telescope realistically does not reach high power, since it would need 2mm eyepieces which are the opposite of wide field views). I use it with Explore Scientific 17mm 92 degree, and a 13mm APM XWA 100 degree eyepieces, and do star collimation with a 6.7mm eyepiece. So most of the use is at 25x, to frame huge objects like NGC7000 or the largest extensions of M31 | | |
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| ▲ | petee 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Beautiful, like I needed a new crossover of hobbies; btw could this fill a 220 format frame? You also could save a lot of weight by boring out your plywood base and still be plenty rigid |
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| ▲ | robotswantdata an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Very cool project. Been taking my dwarflab mini on hikes instead of the 12” dob ;) , not the same at all but enjoy getting dark sky and some great astro shots. |
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| ▲ | oAlbe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How does one get started in the telescope building hobby? |
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| ▲ | hackingonempty 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Very nice!! What are you using for interferometry? |
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