![]() If you are a first time telescope builder and want to try something smaller and more manageable for your first project, then I highly recommend " Build Your Own Telescope" by Richard Berry. Amateur Telescope Making combines woodworking and shop skills with a fair amount of design work, all of it necessary to insure your telescope works by the time you're done! Building a telescope is not something I did on my own I had lots of help and inspiration from many sources. For those who dream of building a big scope, hopefully it will provide some idea of what you can expect when you start down this road.īy my count, this will be the ninth telescope I've built for myself, family or friends. In fact, the original Mariner design is closely based on my smaller telescope I designed and built, named Equinox.Ī scope the size of Mariner is probably not the best "first" project, but for those who are starting on the large telescope journey, hopefully this provides some ideas about how the process goes and things you may try. This telescope is also HUGE, but it is completely scalable to a smaller (or bigger!) telescope of similar design. The design of Mariner is a classic design known as a " truss Dobsonian", with a few special modifications and choices made to reflect my own personal preferences and observing habits. It makes the project look long, and it is! Constructing a telescope this big is no small endeavour it took about a year to complete, working a couple of hours on my weekends each week.Īmateur Telescope Making is a rewarding hobby, and the amateur astronomy community spawns many excellent innovations and designs. I've made many steps in this Instructable to make the supporting text more closely connected to the pictures I show. ![]() She listened to me agonize and rant about how to do this that or the other thing, and nodded like she belived me everytime I promised that the views of the Universe would be more than little white smudges when it was finally done! She never blinked an eye through the entire long process. This project would not have been possible without her support, patience, and willingness to simply let me build the telescope I wanted to build. Somewhere along the way, it all got put together to become Cosmos Mariner, or " Mariner" for short.īefore we dive into the project, I have to thank my wife. Additionally, I had been impressed by Gale Christianson's book, " Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae". Further, my youth was filled with incessant study of deep space missions, and I was well aware of the Mariner series of spacecraft, notably Mariner 9, the first spacecraft to visit Mars. ![]() One of the formative experiences in my life that firmly put me on the path to being a professional scientist was watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I always knew I was going to build a large telescope, and had waffled around with names. It is a habit I learned from reading David Levy (my favorite book of his is " Guide to the Night Sky", which used to be called " The Sky: A User's Guide"). This Instructable will outline my own response to aperture fever, the construction of a telescope that I call " COSMOS MARINER."Įver since I started out in amateur astronomy, I have named my telescopes. Eventually, however, many of us are afflicted with a longing called " aperture fever" - the desire to have a much larger telescope, that can gather just a few more bits of light from the Cosmos. Many of us start in the 8-inch to 10-inch range, and spend many long nights cruising around the Cosmos checking out the sights. There are many good Instructables here about making your own backyard Dobsonian telescope.
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