Welcome

Welcome

This is my personal site which is dedicated to amateur telescope making and observing the sky. As I've learned a lot from others who shared their experiences on the internet, it seems only natural to publish some of my own. Due to the international nature of amateur astronomy this website is written in English. Feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

Home

As of 2022 this is a new website. Almost all of the pages were updated and several new ones were added, they have been designated “(New)” in the menu.

Amateur Telescope Making

Creating your own instrument is very fulfilling. Discovering the universe with a homemade telescope gives every observation an extra dimension. But making your own is a journey in itself, the telescopes and projects that feature on this website where preceded by many failures and a lot of learning. Hopefully the information on this website will aid you in your own journey.

Telescopes

This website  contains  information on several telescopes that I build over the last 30 years. You can find them under the header “Telescopes” in the menu.

20 cm f4 String Telescope, two versions of a telescope I build for air travel

45 cm f4.5 String telescope, a telescope I rebuild several times over the course of 10 years

45 cm f4.6 Final version, a complete rebuild of the 45 cm into a Lowrider

45 cm f4.6 Binoscope, a binocular telescope I finished in 2015, but that still needs to a major upgrade and that will probably be operational again in 2023

30 cm f4.6 Travelscope, a telescope I build as a replacement for the 20 cm f4 string telescope.

11 cm f4 Travelscope, an upgrade from a older telescope for a pack trip to Asia

30 cm f4.5 Binoscope, a new telescope that I finished designing. The build I will start in the summer of 2023

Older Telescopes

Other Projects

Once you start building telescopes, why not build some other stuff.  Under the header “Other Projects” you can find the following pages on related ATM projects.

Split Pupil finder

Parallelogram Mount for 28×110 Binocular

Mirror Mount for 28×110 Binocular

Observation Chair, two versions of the same design

Observing

Although much of this website is dedicated to building telescopes, observing the sky is always the end goal. Under “Observing” in the menu you can find some pages with topics related to the night sky. I hope to add more pages in the future.

Carl’s L

The JACA scale

The Really Big List

Observing Jupiter under during a full moon with the 45 cm (version 4)