Skip to content(if available)orjump to list(if available)

The tiniest yet real telescope I've built

The tiniest yet real telescope I've built

24 comments

·December 12, 2025
Visit

chantepierre

Hello, author here ! Other interesting builds or projects going on in the french amateur telescope maker community :

  - Sunscan, by the STAROS team : a fully integrated open-source solar imaging kit : https://www.sunscan.net/fr  

  - Eric Royer's binocular 24" dobson : http://www.astrosurf.com/topic/124758-bino600/  

  - The Slim400 by Laurent Bourrasseau : https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/920950-the-slim400/  

  - Astrowl, an electronically enhanced astronomy kit : http://www.astrosurf.com/topic/151807-projet-astrowl-de-visuel-assist%C3%A9/  

  - The smallest, an open-source 6" portable dobson : http://www.astrosurf.com/topic/176898-un-dobson-150-f5-facile-%C3%A0-imprimer-et-assez-compact/

  - A dedicated astrophotography power supply : https://github.com/Antiath/Open-Power-Box-XXL
Of course there are many others but those are the one on the top of my head now

fransje26

Thank you for the links and the write-up!

I'll share them with a friend who loves astronomy and who loves to organize star-gazing events that he livens up with his Unistellar telescope.

waerhert

Very cool, thanks for sharing! Any ideas of adding 2 gimbal motors to this for GOTO? MS6010v3 or something lighter would seem like a good fit.

9Mfhf34U

Do you have an RSS feed just for the astronomy posts on your blog?

chantepierre

No, but that should be quite straightforward to add with Astro, I will check that.

  Edit : it seems that I now do have one : https://lucassifoni.info/blog/tag/astronomy/rss.xml
I am not an RSS user myself, I tested it with an online reader and it should be working.

Nition

I always love the moment in blog posts like this, where the writer with their esoteric knowledge of the project will say something like "I almost considered reflaboring the exahenge, but of course it would be a ridiculous prospect for a project of this type". And then always, inevitably, there is the followup edit; "I reflabored the exahenge."

Too rarely in life are things made better than practical consideration would dictate, just because of dedication to the craft.

chantepierre

Your comment brings me back to my first mirror making adventure, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the jargon and acronyms used by the mirror making community... a few years later I internalized it and use it as if it was common knowledge. I should put little explanations or details in my posts.

Nition

There was enough there for me to get the basic idea, which is fine I think. Can't really expect every niche post to have all the details necessary for a general audience and it's fun to get a glimpse into these worlds anyway.

Thanks for sharing the post!

awesome_dude

A friend of mine once told me - learning a new field is all about learning the language of that field

macintux

A friend of mine asked me why we have such precise terminology in IT; I asked her why English has so many different words for "chair".

eru

That's a big part of it, but far from everything.

jiggawatts

What they hear:

"Exorcise the lattice hoard to siphon the new incarnation."

What we said:

"Purge the web cache to download the new version."

aa-jv

I just love the fluent use of terms, and the whole ontology of the subject itself just seems so appealing to me. For a moment, I felt like others feel when listening to me and my colleagues discuss kernel build issues or other software challenges - befuddled, bemused, enchanted.

I guess, if/when I retire to that remote mountain hideaway, I might just get into this hobby. The idea of grinding my own mirrors to look at dew on the spiderwebs of the neighborhood is just so appealing.

isolli

Very nice! But you won't beat this ;)

> Optical Engineer Rik ter Horst shows us how he makes very small telescopes (at home) which are intended for use in micro-satellites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxwhCmO90UQ

chantepierre

Rik's monolithic Cassegrains are the perfect example of the blend of amateur and high-end professionnal work in astronomical optics, thanks for linking it ! His amateur work is incredible, like this 16" CDK : https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/558284-a-400-mm-f1...

jiggawatts

Dayyum, those shots are incredible! I've seen worse pictures from professional telescopes.

tejtm

This coming year ... if the crik don't rise (as it does with some regularity). Some of you may be able to take a picture of yourself with one of Ril ter Horst lenses as it will be launched in a 2U cubesat named OreSat1 by Oregon's Portland State University undergrads.

https://www.oresat.org/home

pictures would be captured by hand held groundstations

https://www.oresat.org/technologies/ground-stations

danhau

Came here to link this, but you beat me to it :)

2b3a51

Roughly similar in size to the ones Newton made for the Royal Society as demonstration instruments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_reflector

Very nice and I might look for one of these mirror kits.

ggm

When did buying a mirror on Ali overtake grinding your own? I guess when Ali became Edmund scientific ie mirror grinding hasn't been a thing since I was in shorts (the 70s)

chantepierre

We buy pre-dug mirrors on Ali to refigure them, or dig and figure our own all the time. See Ali as a supplier of prepolished blanks :) . The l/6 I mentioned in the post are l/6 spheres, so they also need figuring.

LtdJorge

Very cool blog, not just post

upvotenow

[flagged]