Wresting the Secrets of the Skies - Making a School Telescope: A craftsman's account of a complex design process that led to a remarkable range of new technological understandings and new aesthetic experiences

Abstract

Ever since my son and I saw the moons of Jupiter through a ";home-made"; telescope, of lenses and cardboard tubes, eighteen or so years ago, the desire to see more of the solar system persisted with me.Sporadic forays to the library to read up on telescopes kept alive the urge· to make an instrument which my craftsman's knowledge told me would be a fascinating enterprise in new techniques. I was deterred for all those years by the immediate demands upon my time, and my other interests, and not least by having an hour or so with an enthusiast making a 6 inch Newtonian reflector. I realized the amount of work involved in making the parabolic mirror alone.

Somewhere in one of the works on telescope making I have read, it is said that a famous group of amateur telescope makers were so fascinated by the techniques involved in their hobby, that those techniques took precedence over the astronomical observations they did with their superb products. This thought has haunted me somewhat throughout my venture into telescope making which was determined, firstly, by sensing that"; it is later than you think";, and secondly, that the rings of Saturn will soon, astronomically speaking, be at their best for small telescopes. The maximum opening of rings is due in early 1980. So you still have time!