Jims Orion XT10 Astronomy Blog

At the Kelling Heath Star Party there were many hundreds of telescopes, from little Meade ETX90’s through to giant 24inch Dobsonians, and gorgeous high tech Refractors setup for astro-photography with some very expensive looking cooled CCD cameras and guide scopes.

One of the big Dobs that really caught my eye was Fossil Light, constructed entirely by Martin Lewis of SkyInspector.co.uk. I spent quite a while talking to Martin about the scope. It is a wonderful example of fine engineering, with well thought out design. Everything has been carefully considered to ensure it performs as well as possible, and it looks remarkably modern for a scope that was built back in 1996. Bear in mind this was in the early days of the Internet when there was very little information about constructing telescopes, and he had to rely on the few books available at the time. How we take the Internet for granted nowadays!

Fossil Light 18inch f/4.5 Dobsonian

You can learn more about the construction of this fine telescope at Martin’s website where you can find a PDF describing how he built it in the Equipment section.

Also keep an eye out for an article he has written for the Dec 2011 edition of Sky at Night, where he explains how he was able to use his dobsonian’s to track and produce some remarkable pictures of the International Space Station.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Astrophotography, Observing, Review, XT10. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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