G'day from Australia.

Hi Ed,

Welcome to the boards. Lovely scope you have there!!

As already indicated. Phil Lardner is our local ATM swami guru!! Phil is currently building a 14" folded stevick-paul telescope. Last I heard he was busy making two matching 10" flat mirrors. Phil is a goldmine of ATM knowledge.

I have alerted him to this post!

Phil Lardner is our local ATM swami guru!! Phil is currently building a 14" folded stevick-paul telescope. Last I heard he was busy making two matching 10" flat mirrors. Phil is a goldmine of ATM knowledge.

For the benefit of anyone who like me never heard of a 'folded stevick-paul telescope' before!
bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/alumni/dstevick/stevpaul.htm

The whole site of 'wierd telescopes' is worth a look
bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/alumni/dstevick/weird.htm

Cheers,
~Al

Nice scope. I hope to build something like that but with an aperature of 10 to 12".

Hi Ed,

Just home after the holidays and still catching up on email, so sorry for not replying before now! Yup, as advertised I'm currently working on a 14" f/15 folded Stevick-Paul scope for high contrast planetary work. Progress on that project was on hold for a while, but I'm getting back to it now the holidays are over.

I'm also about to turn the sod on a 5m domed observatory to house both the 14" f/15 and a 20" f/4 Newtonian piggybacked on a large permenant fork mount. Just to make it different, I'm planning on making the dome in the form of a 6v icosahedron geodesic structure - I don't like making things easy for myself! If you do a search for "CADRE GEO" either on these boards or in Google you should come up with a link to some very useful geodesic design software which will give you an idea of what I am saddling myself with.

I'll post pictures as I make progress!

Phil.

PS - I built a very compact 8.75" truss Newtonian to take on holidays with me to France this summer - it worked a treat! Here are a few pics.