#telescopemaking — Public Fediverse posts

I'm at a point in my #telescopemaking project where I need to cut a hole in my tube for the eyepiece. But... could I find my hole saws? After an hour, I found them in the bottom of a random box, covered in dust. I decided that I should create a little shelf for my pegboard to hold them, so they have a permanent home and I will be able to find them in the future. 10 minutes of #onshape, 2 hours of printing, and voila! a custom shelf to hold them in a permanent location.

Okay, my DIY CNC is cutting the ground board for my 6" scope refurbishment project. Last major piece in my #telescopemaking project. Now, it's mostly painting and assembly.

Combining my experiments with #telescopemaking and #ai, I used Claude Code to help me make a small application that can output DXF patterns for all the major flat/cut from plywood items to make a basic Dobsonian telescope. It will automatically layout finger joints for my CNC, which is kind of a pain to do by hand with OnShape or other cad tools. I haven't tested it for real yet, but I will probably use it to make the rocker box for my 6" revival project.

Some more #onshape cad, the rough model for the next few bits of a Dobsonian telescope project I'm working on. No details yet, just mucking around with how it looks. Trying to use 1/2" ply rather than 3/4" ply, and will add some gussets to reinforce bits. #telescopemaking

Spent a couple of hours trying to understand how to position 3 supports in a mirror cell optimally. #telescopemaking Didn't understand PLOP's suggestion, so I had Claude Code help me grind out a similar calculation in Python, and now I think I understand it much better. The basic idea is that variations at the edges are more harmful, so they should be minimized. I now reproduce PLOPs suggestions.
https://github.com/brainwagon/blip

I worked on roughly reproducing the 6" mirror cell from my first telescope as a 3D print, but as I work on it, I can't help but realize just how mediocre the design is. I think I'll start from scratch. #telescopemaking #3dprinting

First prototype of a diagonal holder/spider that can be easily/cheaply 3D printed. Vanes will be made out of 1/16" aluminum strip. My idea is to be able to supply these for a pittance to our telescope making workshop. I have at least three improvements to make before I give it to our first guinea pig. #telescopemaking

It's cloudy tonight, so I can't test this for real under the stars, but I have some data I acquired from a couple of nights ago. The tetra3 plate solver is really awesome and fast: so much so the other processing is the bottleneck. Stars are currently labeled with the Hipparcos ID numbers, but a little more work and I'll have more human names for them. Nifty. #astronomy #astrophotography #telescopemaking

Prototype computerized finder scope is more or less complete/functional, on a baby camera tripod. It has a 3D printed Vixen style dovetail, which should make it easy to mount on a telescope when I get it working better. If it is clear tonight, I am going to use it to grab some additional test frames tonight, and work on focusing. #3dprinting #telescopemaking

Prototype #astronomy / #telescopemaking project: a basic Raspberry Pi 5 based camera, with an IMX296 based camera and a 25mm lens. It can acquire images which can be used with a plate solver, and figure out what stars are visible in the field. The acquisition software is something I tinkered together, ultimately to use the astrometry.net plate solver (I think, unless I find something better).

For a couple of weeks, I've been wondering where my copy of Texereau was, and whether I even owned a copy of "The Dobsonian Telescope" by Kriege and Berry. Today, while looking for something else, I found both, and now they are with my other #telescopemaking books.

Pondering using 2020 aluminum extrusion for struts on my 12.5" telescope project. Might be cheaper than either 1" tubing or 1" box section, and probably easier to work with.
#telescopemaking

https://www.edmundoptics.eu/knowledge-center/application-notes/optics/understanding-optical-specifications/

#Optics #TelescopeMaking #Astrodon 14673889 #Astronomy

Put together two more Ronchi testers today. If I am going to keep doing this and giving them away, I should figure out how to streamline assembly.
#telescopemaking

My 20 year old code for computing Ronchi patterns for telescopes was too old and crufty, and only wrote PGM files. New one is written in Python, pops up a window with the pattern, and also saves it to a .png file (or whatever you like the PIL supports). #telescopemaking

I dug out my 12.5" f/5 mirror that I stopped working on a decade ago. Using my 100 LPI grating, it looks to me like the mirror is reasonably smooth (the image is marred by a bit of thermal distortions in my garage) and if I read Mel Bartels Ronchi analyzer correct, it's probably about 1 wave undercorrected. #telescopemaking

This morning has a bit of a #telescopemaking theme: I got a first draft of a (better) Ronchi tester setup in my garage. https://brainwagon.surge.sh/blog/ronchi_tester/

Oh, the irony! A page about telescope making that can't even focus its own hypertext *lens* 🔭. Maybe #ModSecurity just couldn't handle the cosmic brilliance of amateur stargazers. 🌌🤦‍♂️
https://stellafane.org/tm/atm/ #telescopeMaking #irony #amateurAstronomy #cosmicBrilliance #HackerNews #ngated

Second mirror for the Hadley looks much better. #telescopemaking

I think I need to build one of these.
https://github.com/githubdoe/skysolve
#astrophotography #telescopemaking