The Galilean Nights are approaching and there is another opportunity for everyone to see how huge is the universe and how astronomers, since the Galileo Galilee, have tried to discover more mysteries of this extremely big space around us!
My impression is that beside the science, at the moment, the instrumental technology plays a very important role in our understanding of the universes, on what is happening in any specific part of the space and of course, HOW!

Simply, more discoveries can be obtained by better instruments.

The instruments are meant to be any kind of telescopes (either ground or space based), any other facilities which help better quality and more accurate results, e.g. adaptive optics on ground based telescopes which reduces the atmospheric effects, and the measuring instruments like CCDs, photometers or spectrometers. But the question is how much it’s difficult to make those instruments? Galileo Galilee made (or used) the first one 400 years ago and nowadays there are several small and big manufacturers which produce a wide variety of different instruments with different qualities and prices.

BUT, what I’m intending in this note, is about how to make our own instruments and start observation with the one we make. When you do observations with your own made telescope, you enjoy your observation much more than observing with a commercial one, even if the quality of observation is poor! Believe me and go ahead!

If you have enough time to make one until the Galilean nights, it would be a good chance to observe Jupiter and it’s moons with your own made telescope as Galileo did 400 years ago and then you can share your enjoys with your friends, neighbours and family members during 22-24 October, while many people do it at the same time all around the world! Otherwise, just start making it and show those interested people who are around, how they can do it themselves!

No experience in making telescope! No experience in observation!
NO WORRIES!
It’s much easier than you can imagine! You should only be interested in this fascinating experience. If so, simply follow the easy understanding instructions and with some simple material that you should be able find them very easily, make your telescope. For the final part, you might need help of a coating laboratory or company to do the coating on your mirror! Or if you
found making the mirror difficult (which is not!), skip that part and buy the mirror as well

DO NOT forget that this kind of telescope is not the same type as Galileo made 400 years ago, but if you are eager to make the all parts yourself, making the mirror is much easier than making the lenses!
In fact, Galileo Galilee made a refractor telescope which consists two lenses, and you can even make one using the lenses you can buy but making a reflector telescope is the one we can make according to our nowadays knowledge! We all would like to see the skies’ beauties specially with the telescope we make ourselves

You may yourself find many different useful instructions for telescope making, but as an example, Mark T. VandeWettering has a comprehensive sets of notes at his website about making the amateur telescopes with all practical details that you may need to know if you are eager to build one.

Mark T. VandeWettering notes about making amateur telescopes

and lots of useful information at The Springfield Telescope Makers website.

I’m looking forward to seeing lots of reports to the Galilean Nights’ website about making those telescopes. Make your report either if you do your observation using your own made telescope or even you have already started to make one and in this case don’t forget to attract the others’ interest

Shahin Jafarzadeh

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.