Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello, buddies
I want to make my own telescope and I know there are ways to make a simple one with a much less expense than to simply buy one, and of course, making your own telescope is much more interesting! Unfortunately, I don't exactly what to do. This idea only came yesterday. So, if you know any useful website, please share with me. Or, if available, you could give me the instruction, too.
Thanks

Hi!
Building a telescope seems really cool. These websites might be helpful:
http://amasci.com/amateur/teles.html
http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articl ... oject.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question568.htm
Hope this helped, good luck!

Hi phale,

Two other pages (in addition to those noted by staryl13) that may help are:

How to Make a Simple Telescope, with step by step instructions:
http://www.ehow.com/how_17057_make-simp ... scope.html

A webpage including background and history of amateur telescope making:
http://www.answers.com/topic/amateur-telescope-making

phale wrote:Hello, buddies
I want to make my own telescope and I know there are ways to make a simple one with a much less expense than to simply buy one, and of course, making your own telescope is much more interesting! Unfortunately, I don't exactly what to do. This idea only came yesterday. So, if you know any useful website, please share with me. Or, if available, you could give me the instruction, too.
Thanks

Good luck with your building project. I'm not sure how high quality your telescope is intended to be, but I think a good source of optics is from one of the edmund companies:
http://www.edsci.com/

They have several different product lines, the 'cheap' line is:
http://www.anchoroptics.com/

The prices looked pretty good for research grade optics. Obviously, if you aren't an amatuer astronomer, and aren't building a telescope to be used for the next few years, you probably could use found lenses, as mentioned in some of the links the other experts provided.

Also, I'm assuming you are builiding this for fun, and not a science fair project? Projects where you build things can be difficult to enter in science fairs, especially if you haven't thought about this question in advance.

Good luck!

Louise

Louise wrote:

phale wrote:Hello, buddies

They have several different product lines, the 'cheap' line is:
http://www.anchoroptics.com/


Also, I'm assuming you are builiding this for fun, and not a science fair project? Projects where you build things can be difficult to enter in science fairs, especially if you haven't thought about this question in advance.

Good luck!

Louise

Oh, this's not a science fair project. However, this's not for fun, either. I do it because I like it.

Thank you

a telescope is comprised of two curved lenses much like (chemistry) watch glasses. they are conected by tubing to block out unwanted light, 1 glass must be smaller than the other