reflecting telescope principle and model please?

rasik_35

can anyone please give me any resource for building a reflecting telescope (and also the underlying principles)
(sorry if it's not the right place to ask)

JeffKoch

Completely the wrong sub-forum to post this question in, but for basic principles you can check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflecting_telescope. If you actually want to build one from scratch, you have a lot of work ahead of you, starting with fully understanding how they work. I don't know if anyone grinds their own mirrors anymore, so you'd probably start with a finished mirror and build from there, which can be fairly simple or extremely complicated depending on design details, how big the mirror is, and how good a telescope you want to wind up with. Pick up a subscription to Sky and Telescope, you'll learn a lot and get an idea of what you're getting into thinking about building one.

jtbell

Moved to the Astronomy forum.

Chronos

Amateur telescope making [ATM] is not quite as popular as it was 20-30 years ago. Modern manufacturing methods enable commercial production of finished mirrors cheaper than they can be built from scratch. Newport Glass Works http://www.newportglass.com/ngwkitp.htm sells very nice ATM kits at reasonable prices, and typically include a finished secondary mirror [making an optical flat is usually more difficult than making the main mirror]. The price includes aluminizing the primary once complete. Of course you will still need a tube, mirror cell, spider, focuser and mount. All in all, it is a great deal of work for very modest [if any] cost savings. It is, however, possible to build higher quality optics than commercially available. It is a good project for a hard core DIY'r with plenty of time to spare.