Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 72
Gary Seronik
Telescope Workshop
Telescope Making
Then and Now
Are amateur telescope makers as good as they were 50 years ago?
I've been taking care of this magazine's
telescope-making department since 1998, and even
during my relatively brief tenure, there's been a dizzying number of changes in the hobby. I'm constantly
impressed by the creativity and thirst for innovation that
ATMs so often display. Indeed, to invoke a well-worn
truism, change is the only constant. That becomes more
obvious the farther back we look. To illustrate the point,
let's travel back 50 years in time and look at telescope
making as it was practiced in 1966.
If you were an active amateur astronomer in the mid1960s, chances are you spent a lot of time looking at the
Moon and planets. You may have also enjoyed splitting
double stars, monitoring a few variables, and probably
even hunting down the Messier objects. In all likelihood
your telescope was a small refractor or a 6- to 8-inch equatorial reflector. If you were well-heeled, you could have
bought a basic 6-inch f/8 Cave reflector on an equatorial
mount for the equivalent of $1,500 in 2016 dollars. In 1966
telescopes were generally expensive to buy, leading many
amateurs to make their own. If you were fortunate, you
might find someone in your local club who could show
you the ropes. Or you relied on books like Making Your
Own Telescope by Allyn J. Thompson (if you were lucky)
or the much older three-volume Amateur Telescope Making
published by Scientific American (if you weren't).
The Gleanings for ATMs department in the October
1966 issue featured the article "An Engineering Student
Builds a Mounting." Not the most enticing title, but
such was the flavor of the magazine back then. That
student's telescope was a symphony of gleaming metal,
from the aluminum tube housing a long-focus 6-inch
Newtonian optical train, to the massive German equatorial mount complete with a (presumably homemade)
motorized, variable-speed drive. Many of the mount's
components were machined from blocks of aluminum.
It was an ambitious project but far from a rarity. Look
in that year's January issue and you'll see a fine, homebuilt 10-inch f/7.5 Newtonian riding on a steel equatorial
horseshoe mount, all housed in a miniature Palomar-
72
Januar y 2016 sky & telescope
GARY SERONIK
S&T ARCHIVE: VICTOR NICKOLASHIN
Far left: Victor Nickolashin's beautiful 6-inch
reflector was featured in
the October 1966 issue
of this magazine. Its
detailed machining is
representative of homebuilt instruments from
this era.
Left: Described in the
February 2013 issue,
Albert Highe's 24-inch
f/3.3 ably demonstrates
the current state of the
ATM art. Built to gather
light - and lots of it -
but retain portability,
scopes like this were
unimaginable in 1966.
Sky and Telescope - January 2016
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - January 2016
Contents
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - Cover1
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - Cover2
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 1
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - Contents
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 3
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 4
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 5
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - A
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - B
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 6
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 7
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 8
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 9
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 10
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - 11
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Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - Cover3
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - Cover4
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S0
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S1
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S2
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S3
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S4
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S5
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S6
Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S7
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Sky and Telescope - January 2016 - S12
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