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.
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.
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.
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
I am also trying to automate the XYZ table, capture and analysis like WavefrontPro does, I have a POC going on that bases itself on a CLI-only build of DFTFringe + outside orchestration with Elixir. My goal would be to control everything with a gamepad and automate the whole test session. Here is a video : ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii2eGb7vbk4 ). But I need to throw the code away and rewrite it.
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.
> cabinet makers were building the most impressive wood frames
You say impressive, but my mind reads that as heavy even if they looked amazing
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.
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.
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.
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
How does one get started in the telescope building hobby?
Quite an impressive build. How hard is it to collimate the telescope? Does it hold the collimation?
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
Very nice!!
What are you using for interferometry?
Hi, thank you !
I am using DFTFringe ( https://github.com/githubdoe/DFTFringe ) with a Bath interferometer (specifically this model which is super handy : https://www.printables.com/model/986094-multi-bath-interfero... ) and this 3-axis table which is bulky but simple to build ( https://www.printables.com/model/860316-xyz-platform-for-bat... ).
I am also trying to automate the XYZ table, capture and analysis like WavefrontPro does, I have a POC going on that bases itself on a CLI-only build of DFTFringe + outside orchestration with Elixir. My goal would be to control everything with a gamepad and automate the whole test session. Here is a video : ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii2eGb7vbk4 ). But I need to throw the code away and rewrite it.