Sky and Telescope - December 2017 - 84

FOCAL POINT by John Manney

The Family Telescope

Even though I'd conceived of and built it, who was I to consider it my instrument?

about 12 or 13 years old, my older
brother brought home a book that
described the amazing things one could
see with a telescope. This slim volume
included instructions for building
a 6-inch reﬂector, which would
show such wonders as the moons
of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.
Ordinary people with ordinary tools
could create it, the book promised.
I'd thought telescopes were constructed by experts and sold for a
mint, so I was fascinated by the
idea of crafting one myself on the
cheap. Together with the Edmund
Scientiﬁc catalog, this little book
was all I needed to do some serious dreaming.
My ﬁrst telescope comprised a
25-mm objective lens, an eyepiece, and a tube made of black
construction paper. I fashioned a
beautiful mount with my Erector
Set. This little scope provided ﬁne
views of the Moon and the Pleiades,
and it gave me a yearning for something bigger and better. Aperture
creep, anyone?
I wasn't adventurous enough to
grind my own mirror, so I started
saving my paper-route earnings in
order to buy a ready-made one.
By downsizing the 6-inch mirror
to a 4¼-inch, the parts became
affordable. I purchased the mirror,
along with a very simple focuser, a
secondary mirror, a ﬁnder mount, and
two eyepieces from Edmund Scientiﬁc.
The tube was a stovepipe, and for the
azimuth bearing I co-opted a pair of pipe
ﬁttings. Everything else was made from
recycled wood and hardware-store items.
Without my dad's help, the project
wouldn't have gone far. He devoted
numerous Saturdays to assisting me.
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D E C E M B E R 2 0 17 * S K Y & T E L E S C O P E

My father had a keen sense for cost-cutting. As a mechanical engineer, he knew
that a $2.50 cast-iron pipe ﬂange would
work just as well as the $15 brass ﬂange
the plans recommended. The blueprints
called for hardwood legs for the tripod;
we used softwood left over from other

projects. To make the mount, we cut up
a leaf from an old oak table.
My enthusiasm for astronomy must
have rubbed off on other people. I took
the pipe ﬁttings to a machine shop to
get them drilled and tapped. I expected
to pay a dollar for the work, but for his
efforts the machinist wanted only a
copy of the plans!
When we ﬁnally began using the
telescope, it performed very well. My
parents and four siblings enjoyed looking at the Moon, the planets, and the
Pleiades. For my part, I loved to aim at
a random area in the Milky Way and
slowly move through the star ﬁeld.
After the initial excitement wore
off, my family rarely came out to look
through the telescope. I misunderstood
this to mean they didn't care about it.
Years later, they were horriﬁed to learn
that I'd given it to a friend. They
considered it to be theirs as much
as it was mine. This, I realized, is
why they'd always referred to it not
as "John's telescope" but rather as
simply "the telescope," meaning the
family telescope.
I knew I had to do the unthinkable and ask for it back. Fortunately,
my friend was more than happy to
return it, and I felt that I was back in
good graces with my loved ones.
On a recent Christmas, we had a
pleasant day with our children, who
are now adults with little ones of their
own. After dinner, the weather was
mild and the Moon full - a perfect
moment to introduce a new generation
to . . . the family telescope.
¢ JOHN MANNEY worked as an
automotive engineer for 30 years. He
watches the skies with the University
Lowbrow Astronomers, a club based in
Ann Arbor, Michigan.

DA N GUIDER A

IN THE EARLY 1960S, when I was
Sky and Telescope - December 2017

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