Contents 1 Getting Acquainted with the Telescope Observing the SKY SHOW............... 17 Photography with your Telescope... 51 Mirror Grinding and Testing....... 79 Telescopes You Can Build... 105 . 133 147 157 190 Telescope Mounts........ Collimation and Adjustments onmo Pwr Telescope Optics . INDEX by Sam Brown Library of Congress Catalog Gard Number: 67-31540 Edmund Scientific Co., Barrington 08007 © 1975 by Edmund Scientiti All rights reserved First Edition published 1967 ‘Second Edition 1975 Third Edition 1876 Fourth Edition 1879 Prine in the United States of Amores Ny SCIENTIFIC CO. PCC LLLBO cue TEs (GALILEO (\564-1642) WAS FIRST TO VIEW THE MANY WONDERS OF THE NIGHT SKY WITH A TELESCOPE NAMED FOR HIM, THE GALILEAN TELESCOPE IS ACTUALLY THE INVENTION (IN 1608) OF JAN LIPPERSHEY. THE OBJECTIVE IS A LENS SxEPIEce iS 6 a YI Resa = | 1608 - GALILEAN TELESCOPE - Jan Lippershey ~ Hociano Te opeerie BA fainnon | THe, oovecrvE WEARERS | IN MODERN TELESCOPES ARE THE 200sinch APERTURE REFLECTOR ON MT. PALOMAR, Calif., WITH FOCAL LENGTH OF 55 FT., and THE 40-inch YERKES REFRACTOR Ar WILLIAMS BAY, Wis., WITH FOCAL LENGTH OF 63 Fr. BUILD ANO USE TELESCOPES TO 12/2" APERTURE. TOP CHOICE WITH BEGINNERS 8 THE NEWTONIAN REFLECTOR WITH / Gincw MIRROR, WHICH ITSELF I OFTEN HOMEMADE DRAWINGS ADAPTED from Wr ASTEONOMY ond. YOU" 9 EDMUND SCIENTIFIC co. AGetting Acquainted section (| with the Telescope THE STORY of the telescope begins in Middelburg, Holland, where spec tacle maker Jan Lippershey was amazed to discover that a positive lens placed some distance from the eye and a negative lens placed right at the eye, and the two looked through together, brought the distant church steeple so near astoappear right, within his shop, The news of the magic glass spread, eventually in 1609 reaching the ear of Galileo Galilei of Padua (Padova), Haly, then 45 years of age, teacher, astronomer and scientist, While Lippershey saw the telescope as being of aid to the military, Galileo was fascinated with the idea of putting it to use in revealing the secrets of the night sky. "Beyond the stars of the sixth magnitude you will behold through the telescape a host of other stars, so numerous as to be almost beyond belie Even in his own time, Galileo was given credit for the instrument which now bears the Galilean telescope, It had the advantage ofan erect image, but the grave fault of a very small field of view, Galileo's largest instrument of 1-3/4 inch aperture and 32-power showed less than one quarter of the moon's diameter. A need~ ed step forward was made by Johann Kepler who set forth in 1611 the principles of the astronom- ical refractor, using apositive eye lens, That the star images were now upside down made no great difference; the big improvement was in the field of view, now expanded some four times, Even in those long gone days, the big attraction in telescopes was power ~~ and more power. Even, as today, the direct road to power was obvious: the magnification of any telescope is the focal, length of the front or objective lens, divided by the focal length of the rear or eye lens, All you have to do is make the objective long and the yepiece short, And so there soon blossom aerial rigs of 200ft, and more inlength, all quite shaky and so afflicted with spherical and chro matic aberrations as to fall far short of produe- ing results commensurate with their size, ‘The famous Isaac Newton (1643-1727) saw a possible solution, Color faults in a refracting telescope result when light is bent or refrac in passing through a glass lens, some colors being refracted much more than others. On the other hand, a reflecting objective reflects all colors the same -- it hasno chromatic aberration at all, Of course the spherical aberration is still ere, and Newton's small modelof his reflect with spherical mirror, built in 1672, was not of convincing optical quality, The reflector lan- guished for fifty years until 1723 when Engli man John Hadley presented to the Royal Astro nomical Society the first parabolized reflector, Its performance was excellent, made more dramatic by direct comparison with a 123-ft, focal length refractor. Hadley's instrument was but Sit, focal length and a seant 6in, aperture, yet it showed as much as the larger refractor, and showed it sharper. While Hadley's demonstration put 2 stop to the aerial cireus of refractors, the reflector too had growing pains, capped by Sir William Herschel's 40 - footer of 48 inches clear aperture erected in 1789, This would be ranked big even today, the first of a great line of modern reflecting telescopes of which the 240-inch in Russia is the current “Mr. Big.” The talked-of 800-inch is not yet in the story.