Book of the Week: Build Your Own Telescope

19 Jan 2013

Photo of cover of book. Telescope on cover. Build Your Own Telescope: Complete Plans for Five High-quality Telescopes that Anyone Can Build by Richard Berry, Editor of Astronomy magazine. The 5 telescope designs are

Funny how a conversation at the bookstore spurred my interest in building a telescope. I searched the internet first, but I found this book much better. I think people who build telescopes are too busy enjoying their telescopes to sit down and write a book about building telescopes. Thankfully Richard Berry wrote a book targeted for the DIY crowd. The book talks about telescopes and how they work before going over each design. There are two main types of telescopes, refractors and reflectors. Reflectors tend to be the bang for your buck, so that is reflected in the number of reflector plans versus refractor plans. Most of the construction is simple woodworking. Nothing too hard. Building a telescope seems easy if you don’t have to make any of the optical parts (lens and mirrors). The optical parts can be ordered through companies, but to have telescope builder bragging rights, you need to grind your own mirror. The golden chapters of this book are on how to grind your own mirror and how to test your mirror. These chapters will be invaluable as I attempt to grind my own telescope mirror. Purchase Build Your Own Telescope on Amazon.com or check it out from your local library.