Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope Image Quality - Karl's Questions

[singleton]

One last option that has not been mentioned is the possibility of building your own. Very rewarding, you can get a lot of aperture for the money, and decent mirrors and other components are available commercially for a reasonable price. This option doesn't sound quite right for you, but I just thought I should bring it up. Actually, a Newtonian scope on an equatorial mount might work for your needs and is easily built by amateur scope makers. Just something else to think about.

Have any good resources (book names or URLs) for building a telescope?

 

[chroot]

The general name for it is "amateur telescope making," sometimes abbreviated ATM. There are many yahoo groups and websites dedicated to it -- just do a little googling. You can also find lots of great ideas in back-issues of Sky & Telescope magazine, www.skypub.com[/url]. A company called Willmann-Bell, [url]www.willbell.com[/URL], sells a lot of books for amateur telescope making.

- Warren

 

[EIRE2003]

One last option that has not been mentioned is the possibility of building your own. Very rewarding, you can get a lot of aperture for the money, and decent mirrors and other components are available commercially for a reasonable price. This option doesn't sound quite right for you, but I just thought I should bring it up. Actually, a Newtonian scope on an equatorial mount might work for your needs and is easily built by amateur scope makers. Just something else to think about.

Yea that would be a good idea to build one just to see how it works and find out how good it is, but id still be buying one.

 

[Artman]

Have any good resources (book names or URLs) for building a telescope?

Chroot's response was right on the money.

I have a couple of sites to add

Telescope planner

http://members.aol.com/sfsidewalk/cdobplans.htm

Orion Mirrors

Good place for ready made mirrors.

It's a fun hobby, I've built 5 telescopes so far.