I am a teenager from Stamford, CT and I LOVE astronomy!!! I make my own telescopes and my projects been featured in Sky & Telescope magazine!
Here are my three telescopes. All of them were built in my garage using a router, circular saw, drill, orbital sander, and some hand tools. They are my only woodworking projects to date.
A 10″ f/5.6 Dobsonian. This was originally made for a client who ended up deciding he didn’t want it. Primary mirror was made by Coulter in the 1970s. This telescope is designed for maximum portability – the trusses are detachable, the upper cage nests inside the mirror box, and the whole thing only weighs 35 lbs.
Since this photo was taken I have cut the truss poles and painted them black.
This scope cost about $600, and is the most advanced design of any of my current builds.
A 6″ f/4.3 Dobsonian with a mirror I made. The original incarnation of this was my first homemade telescope, and was very ugly and awkward to use. I rebuilt it recently and it sits on a table, weighing all of 13 lbs and standing less than two feet tall.
I ground, polished, and figured this scope’s primary mirror in August 2017. This scope provides the best views of Mars of any scope I’ve ever looked through.
The mount has been sanded and stained since I took this photo.
The tube is a concrete form tube that has been sanded and painted with two coats of yellow on the exterior and one coat of texture black paint on the interior.
This scope cost about $400 to build.
And my 16″ f/4.7 Dobsonian. The mirror in this one is extremely thin for its diameter (only 1″) and so requires a simple flotation support to not warp under its own weight.
While it weighs only 75 lbs assembled (quite light for a 16″), I usually roll it out of my garage on a dolly, as assembly/disassembly requires about 10-15 minutes.
The black cloth is an old bed sheet used to keep dew and light out of the optical path.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnfxH1cGxGU
This was the most expensive of my telescopes at $1500. While this may sound extreme, that’s a full $500 less than a mass-manufactured 16″, and mine weighs half as much and performs much better.
The 16″ is the same size and performs similarly to the McCarthy Observatory, Greenwich Observatory, and Westport Observatory telescopes, and is comparable in performance to the Stamford Observatory telescope. Unlike any of them, however, mine is portable.
I am now working on a 20″ f/4.5 Dobsonian with a homemade mirror and a mirror support that I will be welding at Rippowam Labs. The 20″ will have about 50% more light gathering and 25% more angular resolution than the 16″, with a weight hovering around 120 lbs. It will easily beat nearly all of the observatory telescopes here in Connecticut.
A video of the Moon through the 6″:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OmodRUdyuY
Here are the robots I made at Rippowam Labs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBQC_mqUdD8