10" Dobsonian Telescope

[pacman]

I've recently completed and collimated my homemade 10" dobsonian telescope. Anyone in the astronomy/star-gazing community would all it a light-bucket. Thought I would post a photo of it... those all-night smoke marathons can be a little tiring. Looking at stars and other objects in the night sky can make the time between fire-tendings go by faster.

10" dobsonian telescope

 

[blackhawk19]

PacMan, I could not get the photo to open but here is a site that might interest you, it has some great pics
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

 

[scott t]

I could not get it to open either. I would love to see it. Please try posting the picture again.

 

[pacman]

sorry. got the photo thing down now

 

[deejaydebi]

That's awsome! Thanks for sharing! Gots some details for us?

 

[pacman]

This is a 10" f/5 primary mirror with a 1.8" diagonal secondary mirror in an aftermarket spider. The focuser is a Meade 1.25" and the finder scope I got on Ebay.

Everything else is put together by plans on the internet. 3/4" plywood, nails, screws, glue, teflon, 6" baking pans, and a 12" od (outside diameter) sonotube. And lots of Krylon texture paint. Started in March and just finished collimating the mirrors yesterday. Took a look at the moon and the craters were amazing. Stars were crisp too but I have too much light pollution in my town. I'll save it for when I go to the high desert or just wait for winter when the seeing is clearer. If I ever get some pics of what you can see with this, I'll post here.

 

[smokincowboy]

very cool ... I bet if you drill a small hole in the fence and set that thing up to look at your smoker when you're smoking chicken the people next door could peek in the hole and would think you was smoking an ostrish... only joking but very cool anyway

 

[flagriller]

Nice! Have fun with it!

 

[navionjim]

Man I'm truly impressed! Many moons ago I attempted to build a 6" reflector form Edmond Science. This was in the early 60s and it involved "walking round the barrel". One inch thick 6" round piece of round glass anchored to a barrel and you had to push /pull another piece 1" piece of round glass back and forth across the anchored one 30 times, then take a step to your right and repeat, for months! Eventually the bottom one became convex and the upper one concave. I gave up after wasting several hounded hours.

 

[hawgheaven]

PacMan, that is AWESOME!!

Great idea for those smokey nights...

 

[deejaydebi]

That's a very impressive telescope Pacman you've done a fine job of building it!

 

[scott t]

That turned out real nice. You should be proud.

 

[pacman]

Thanks. I didn't have the patience to create a primary mirror from scratch. So before building, I made certain that a professionally made commercial grade mirror was available and reasonable. If you are still interested, plans are still floating around the internet and Ebay is the best source for the primary (just my opinion)

 

[ga_smoker]

Good looking scope Pacman. After seeing your pics I think I will
drag out my old Coulter Oddessy 8 for my next all-nighter. I haven't
used it in over 3 yrs.....that's a shame huh?

Steve