The reflecting telescope is the most popular telescope design due to its relatively low price and high optical performance. A large portion of those who choose to observe the sky with a telescope own a reflecting (or Newtonian) telescope or already have one they built themselves. ScopeBuildr includes a whole section dedicated to building a Reflecting Telescope complete with material lists, step by step instructions, pictures and links to many useful articles on the subject.
Building a reflecting telescope does not have to be expensive or complicated. To build a reflecting telescope requires only simple, commonly available tools and materials. Anyone with basic mechanical skills can build a reflecting telescope that will provide hours of enjoyment and years of celestial delights.
How to build a reflecting telescope
Reflecting telescopes are among the most popular types of telescopes. They use mirrors instead of lenses, and they can be used to view objects both near and far. The simplest of these scopes uses a parabolic mirror made from aluminum or glass. This mirror focuses light into an image that appears to be located behind the telescope tube, thus giving you a view of your target.
The design for a reflecting telescope is simple. You can make your own with common tools and materials found around the house.
Step 1: Create the Tube
To begin, cut two pieces of wood that are each about 6 inches long and 2 inches wide. Use a handsaw or jigsaw to cut these pieces from 1-by-4-inch boards. Alternatively, you can use plywood or even cardboard for this step if you prefer not to use wood in your design.
Step 2: Join the Pieces Together
Next, join the two pieces together using glue and nails or screws so that they form an open tube shape with one end missing (this will be where you look through). You can also opt to skip this step and leave the two pieces separate if you want more stability when holding up your telescope during viewing sessions
how to build a reflecting telescope at home
Making a reflecting telescope is not as difficult as you may think. You can build your own reflecting telescope at home with the following instructions.
What you need to build a reflecting telescope:
1. A tube, usually made of aluminum or steel, but sometimes wood or other materials. The tube can be smooth or threaded for attaching accessories.
2. An objective mirror, usually made of glass with a spherical surface that reflects light into the eyepiece. The size of the objective determines how much light enters the scope and how much magnification it will provide when used with an eyepiece of appropriate focal length.
3. An eyepiece which is placed at the end of the scope and magnifies images reflected by the objective mirror so they are visible to the eye through its lens system (usually made up of two lenses). The focal length of an eyepiece is chosen based on how much magnification we want when viewing objects in space (see below). Eyepieces come in different sizes, but most telescopes use only 1-inch diameter tubes, so this is what I recommend using for this project (the one inch size fits best on all types of telescopes).
making a reflecting telescope
A reflecting telescope is a type of telescope that uses mirrors instead of lenses. The primary mirror focuses the light onto a smaller secondary mirror, which in turn reflects the light to the eyepiece. The advantage of a reflecting telescope is that it has a much longer focal length than refracting telescopes, making them much more powerful. The disadvantage is that they are more difficult to build and more expensive than refractors. A good quality reflecting telescope will cost several thousand dollars, but you can make one yourself for much less money.
Here’s how to make your own reflecting telescope:
1) Find an old pair of binoculars or find someone who has some lying around somewhere. They should be at least 5 inches apart so that when you put them together they form one big magnifying glass lens.
2) Get a round cardboard box with an opening large enough for the binoculars to fit through it (make sure the binoculars fit). Cut out two holes above where the binoculars go so that there’s room for your hands when you’re looking through them! You can also cut out one bigger hole on top if you want to take pictures through it later (which I highly recommend).
how to use a reflecting telescope
Reflecting telescopes are one of the most popular types of telescopes. They use mirrors instead of lenses to capture light and focus it onto an eyepiece. They are often cheaper, lighter and easier to make than refracting telescopes, but they have some limitations.
This guide will explain how a reflecting telescope works and show you how to build your own homemade reflecting telescope.
The simple way to understand how a reflecting telescope works is that it is essentially like looking into a mirror that has been turned around so that you can see out through the back side rather than the front side (Figure 1). However, in practice it’s more complicated than that because there are two mirrors involved and each one has its own curvature that must be calculated correctly in order for the image to be focused properly on the eyepiece or camera.
A parabolic mirror reflects light rays exactly parallel to its axis; this means that if you draw a line from the center of curvature at one end of the mirror through its focal point at the other end, then all rays coming from any object point (such as an object in space) will appear to come from this same point on your image plane when viewed through.
Reflecting telescopes are different from refractors in that they use a concave mirror instead of a lens. The advantage of using mirrors is that the light path is shorter and therefore less bulky than with lenses, so the reflector can be made much larger without increasing its weight too much.
The principle behind the reflecting telescope is simple: light rays from an object are gathered by a large curved mirror, reflected back through an opening (called an aperture) and focused to form an image at the eyepiece. The diameter of the primary mirror determines how much light can be collected; this determines how bright the object appears in your viewfinder.
Reflecting telescopes come in many different shapes and sizes, but there are three basic types: Cassegrain, Newtonian and Schmidt-Cassegrain.