Amateur Telescope Making - Stephen F. Tonkin

                    
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Over the last few decades the range of mass-produced equipment available to amateur astronomers has increased in both extent and capability, and decreased in real-term cost. Obvious examples of the enhanced capability of amateur equipment lie in CCD cameras and computer-controlled mounts. The CCD is said to increase the light-gathering power of a telescope by a factor of about a hundred; that is, it is possible to take images with an 8 in (20 cm) instrument that would previously have required an 80 in (2 m) telescope using photographic emulsion. Of course, the resolving power of the 8 in is not also increased! Computer control enables simplified finding of faint objects and, coupled with a CCD, can automatically guide the telescope during imaging. Where then, in
this context, is the place for amateur telescope making (ATMing) and the basement tinkerer, the person Albert Ingalls referred to, in his Amateur Telescope Making trilogy, as the TN - the Telescope Nut?

Quite simply, the opportunities for TNs - who are now better known as ATMs (amateur telescope makers) - have also increased correspondingly, and their craft has developed far beyond what can legitimately be termed "basement tinkering". Richard Berry's CCD Camera Cookbook has resulted in the construction and use of hundreds of home-made CCD cameras, at a cost well below that of the commercially available instruments. As Al Kelly demonstrates
(Chapter 14), making a Cookbook CCD is, while time-consuming, not a particularly difficult task, and the resulting images easily rival those taken with the mass-produced products. Similarly, the innovations of Mel Bartels and others (Chapter 10) have extended computer control to the most common ATM telescope, the Dobsonian-mounted Newtonian, again at a much-reduced cost
compared with commercial offerings.