Part of my recent interest (obsession) with getting my shop equipped for wood working is that I want to return to an activity that I used to do a lot more of: telescope making. In particular, my six and eight inch Dobsonian telescopes that have been relegated to the garage, collecting dust could use some work to make their mount and tube assemblies as nice as the optics. The six inch was the first telescope that I ever did, and I began with my father back when I was only 10 years old. The eight inch was the first telescope that I completed back when I had first begun attending the Chabot telescope maker’s workshop in the early 1990s.

Currently I’m in the “analysis paralysis” mode. This mode is characterized by me sitting with my laptop and some of my reference books, and looking at what others have done and what I could do, and try to plan out an idea about what the design should look like and what it’s capabilities should do.

Here is where my thinking carries me…

I actually lack the patience to really do full on astrophotography, but would like to dabble, and at least be able to do video astronomy. There, the goal isn’t so much to be able to find or track dim fuzzies for long exposures, but merely to keep the telescope smoothly aimed at one of the brighter planets, sun or the moon.

This is actually an easier task than building a full on “GOTO” system. People have been building what are known as “equatorial tracking platforms” for years, and they seem practical and within my skill and tool set. It can be fabricated out of high quality plywood, some strip aluminum and skate bearings, and is not particularly challenging to design. Another good feature of this design is that it is basically a platform which can be added to a conventional Dobsonian design, which means that I can proceed with revamping my old telescope with the assurance that at some later point, I can embark upon this phase with some confidence that it will be useful.

I’m going to start collecting links and information for this project, so that other interested parties can follow along. I’m not certain that it will become a full on “how-to” guide, but I am going to document what my thinking is and log resources that I used along the way, which might be helpful to others.