18-inch Dobson Telescope

After moving to Innsbruck and living some time in the mountains of Tyrol, I started to go back to one of my earliest hobbies, Astronomy, which in fact brought me to optics and physics.  Enjoying the night sky with binoculars or a 10inch Mead SC telescope was soon not enough.  Especially after looking through some of the Dobson telescopes of my local astronomy friends.  I soon started to plan a larger telescope, the largest that would fit into ma small car (a Mitsubishi Colt) and that I could easily handle alone.  So I set out to build an 18-inch f 4.5 Dobson telescope.  The basic idea for the construction I took from David Krieges excellent book: The Dobsonian Telescope.  I modified the design a little bit, to accommodate the pieces I could get in the local hardware stores. The optics (primary and diagonal mirror) I purchased from Galaxy Optics (wave front error peak to valley < l/6 for the 18inch f4.5 mirror).  The final telescope can be seen in the pictures below.

High up in the mountains of Tyrol it delivers fantastic views of planets, stars, clusters, galaxies and nebulas.  From the intricate details of gas nebulas, to the knots in spiral arms of nearby galaxies, from the finest divisions in the rings of Saturn to surface details on the large moons of Jupiter, in moments of steady seeing.

After having completed the telescope, I basically stopped taking photographs, and spent my night in the eyepiece looking at a never-ending list of wonders.  Many times accompanied by my friends, sometimes freezing with me in the gentle mountain winds at close to 3000m above sea level.

After my move to Heidelberg and the bright sky?s of the Rhein valley, the telescope is still in Innsbruck.
 


                          The telescope ready for observing


                          Irene watching M51 in the cold


                          The telescope ready to be loaded into the car


             Detail of the rocker box holding the 18inch mirror
 

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