Amateur Telescope Making

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Simple Dobsonian telescope (with and without stray light protection)

Amateur Telescope Making , abbreviated to ATM, is the English Term for building telescopes as a hobby . The abbreviation also stands for Amateur Telescope Maker . It is a phenomenon going back to the 1920s, in which the amateur astronomer does not buy his telescopes, but builds them himself in DIY style.

history

Before the First World War, astronomers with self-made telescopes were very rare. The beginning of the ATM movement was a series of articles in Scientific American in 1923, in which the self-construction of a telescope was described in detail. The authors were Russell W. Porter and Albert Graham Ingalls . The series eventually appeared as a three-volume book entitled Amateur Telescope Making , which is still available today. ATMs formed the first amateur astronomer clubs in the US - hesitantly on other continents as well.

The vast majority of self-builders have been producing Newtonian telescopes since the beginning of the ATM movement . After the American amateur astronomer John Dobson introduced the principle of the Dobsonian mount towards the end of the 1960s , the combination of a Newtonian telescope on a Dobsonian mount - the so-called Dobsonian telescope - caught on among telescope self-builders due to its simple construction.

Telescopes

Grinding a 30 cm mirror

Today the ATM is widespread in almost all parts of the world, and in many cases the optics itself is ground and polished: The spherical mirrors that are easiest to grind are suitable up to a diameter of about 15 cm; above that, parabolic mirrors are usually used, which have a shorter ratio from opening to focal length and thus telescope lengths. This means that diameters of up to around 60 cm are also sensibly possible using this scheme.

However, there are also successful self-builds of other types of telescopes, such as the Ritchey-Chrétien-Cassegrain telescope at the Harpoint observatory and some telescopes with a mirror diameter larger than one meter.

literature

  • Albert G. Ingalls (Ed .: Amateur Telescope Making. 1st, revised edition. Willmann-Bell, Richmond, Virginia 1996 (English). Describes, among other things, the grinding, polishing, testing and coating of telescope mirrors, the manufacture of lenses and Prisms, the construction of mounts and entire observatory buildings)
  • David Kriege, Richard Berry: The Dobsonian Telescop . Willmann-Bell, Richmond, Virginia 1997, ISBN 0-943396-55-7 (This book describes the construction of large aperture Dobsonian telescopes ).
  • Robert L Clark: Amateur Telescope Making In the Internet Age. Springer, New York 2011, ISBN 978-1-4419-6414-4 .

See also

Web links

credentials

  1. ↑ When can the mirror in a Newtonian telescope be spherical?
  2. ↑ Robert Houdart: The 110 cm Cruxis Telescope
  3. ^ Robert Houdart: Dr. Erhard Hänssgen's 42 inch Dobsonian Telescope
  4. ^ Dan Bakken: Hercules - A 41.2 "Newtonian Telescope
  5. ↑ Steve Swayze: The 40-inch f / 5 telescope
  6. ↑ Mel Bartels: Largest Amateur Telescopes