Homemade Telescopes

Send in pics and information about your home made telescope!

I will be starting a series of tutorials on how to make a telescope. I have some of the parts already including 8″ and 41/4″ primary mirrors.

Side note from Will: The Telescope making tutorials are done.

Now I just need to make the time to do the projects and create some nice tutorials. And on this page I would like to post pictures and information about telescopes people have made. So, if you have made a telescope send me some pics and information. I will post it here!

My 4 1/4 inch newtonian reflector telescope is done. Yay! You can see that project here. It includes a full tutorial with videos.: How to make a Newtonian Reflector Telescope

Easy and Functional telescope mount:
“A Cabinet Mount Telescope”

It has some neat features and it is easy to build. I have a complete tutorial on how to make this 8″ telescope and mount. Learn more about it here: Make a Cabinet Mount Telescope.

Here is a telescope home made by Dave. It is a camera lens that has been modified and attached to a mount. The big thing about this telescope is that the primary lens is made of ED glass which is a superb glass specifically designed for chromatic accuracy. The crispness and color accuracy of this telescope is amazing. This one is five inches in diameter.

Note from Will: I have an article about refractor telescope lenses, the different types, and ED glass here.

Dave also has an 8″ SCT from Meade:

Here is a telescope made by Jon. He followed my tutorial for the optical tube assembly and he made himself quite a nice Dobsonian Mount! My thanks go to him for sharing the picture with us. You can see in the picture a couple more telescope tubes in the background. Looks to me like Jon has been having a whole lot of telescope making fun!!

Here are three pictures of a telescope made by Isabelle and Anna who are students at a school in Sweden. They did this as a school project and they followed my tutorial on how to make a small telescope. Nice work! And my thanks go to them for sharing the pictures with us!

Here is a picture of Norman Butler with his 10″ f4 Dob Buster. This is a specially designed telescope based on the classic Dob. But Norman did a lot of amazing modifications to this including the enhanced height, the bowling ball counterweight and more. This telescope build was completed in 2010 and was showcased in Astronony magazine and Sky & Telescope!

Steve’s 8 inch dobsonian telescope. Great telescope and he gives us a good look at the mirror mount assembly he made for this.