Printonian - Printable Newtonian Telescope

thingiverse

Do you want to learn which sky-dots are planets and which are stars? Want to see the stars before light pollution renders our sky a off-black void? Have a 3d printer? Great! You too can enjoy the hobby of Astronomy! Stay up way later than your bedtime! Stand in the cold and dark! Collimation! -- Seriously it's actually pretty fun. Just don't expect anything as good as Hubble. As a mater of fact, you can see just about every heavenly body better just by looking it up on the internet. But that's not what it's about at all. Looking at your computer monitor, you don't get that feeling of standing on a ball hurtling through space. And the unadulterated light from Jupiter, having traveled hundreds of millions of miles just to fall upon your retina, is like a draught of fresh mountain spring water. It's a very meditative, contemplative hobby. Instructions These pieces will make what's called an OTA (Optical Tube Assembly). You will need some type of base to put this on in order to point it at things with any accuracy. A Dobsonian-type AltAz mount is considered the best for Amateur Telescope Makers (ATM's). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian_telescope I'm not going to cover that here; there are many many resourses out there on the 'net. I'll put up some links soon to some good places to start soon. Maybe someday soon somebody will put a printable equatorial mount up on Thingiverse, or an Arduino powered GoTo mod. Some telescope parts are absurdly expensive, and it's best to spend your money where it counts: the optics. So spend your money on good, quality eyepieces and mirrors, and print everything else that's printable. Links to parts:http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13476 - Focuser v2http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13215 - Spiderhttp://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13222 - Primary cellhttp://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13302 - Truss tube Other links:http://astrojargon.net/MaskGen.aspx - This page spits out a Bahtinov focusing mask, in svg form, customized to your scope. (more info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahtinov_mask) http://www.stargazing.net/naa/scopemath.htm - This is a telescope calculator I found quickly. there are many out there, but this one has a lot of relevant info on one page. just plug in a couple variables and you get some valuable info, like the optimum magnification range.