Telescope Making Resources#
Below are some of the most commonly recommended resources for designing telescopes. These things range from general Newtonian design, literature, optical testing practices, and much more.
General Newtonian Design#
Newtonian Telescope Designer by Mel Bartels
Comprehensive Newtonian telescope building tool
Interlinked calculators that produce accurate and quantitative measurements
Intuitive design with huge amount of variables to play with
Stellafane’s “Building a Dobsonian Telescope”
Useful page cataloging traditional sonotube design
Describes useful woodworking concepts
The Dobsonian Telescope by Kriege and Berry
Large volume with critical measurements for traditional “truss dob” design
Helpful for very large aperture dobsonians
Refractor Design#
Amateur Telescope Making Vol. 2
part of a series written by Ingalls, Vol 2. talks about refractor telescopes
Equatorial Platforms#
Spiders#
Truss Designs#
Mirror Making#
How to Make a Telescope by Jean Texerau
Detailed plans for creating optical mirrors
Includes mirror testing diagrams and protocols
Multiple series on mirror making, testing, and optic creation
Shows machine work in action
Shows the creation of optical flats
Stellafane’s Mirror Making Guide
Step by step process for creating a telescope mirror
Stops right before parabolizing