Putting Together a 12.5" F4.6 Renegade Telescope
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- The 12.5" Renegade telescope is very quick and easy to get ready for an observing session. Gordon Waite shows how to assemble the 'scope, including attaching truss poles, using the truss adapter ring, setting the mirror in the telescope, and sliding on the protective cloak. This model was added to Waite Research's line of Renegade telescopes in February of 2015.
This is the best design I've ever seen. It's magnificent!
That's one of the most beautiful and well designed scopes I have seen!
beautiful?? well designed hence 7000USD price? nahh..
kudos for the incentive and enthusiast builds, but really ain't beautiful in this plywood with a lot of plastic.
Wonderful work... best regards from Santiago de Chile.
Lovely. I can see and admire the design philosophy. Simple user friendly yet profoundly sculptured art
Nagarajan K Thank you so much for your generous comments!
Mr Waite your a true craftsmen bar none. Thank You for your video's and letting us in on true artisanship. SWH.
Really elegant design!
l0ckcr4ck3r Many thanks!
I always enjoy your productions on the Tube. Always informative, easy-to-follow and understand and encouraging. This particular one made me want to own such nice scope and even try to build one; l would start with an 8" first.
Thank you for the time and efforts you put in to share with the world.
God bless
I can't decide what would be more fun, owning one of those telescopes or building one of those telescopes.
Only one way to be sure...
Why not both?
Great design!
Thanks, Aaron. Much appreciated!
Great series of videos, thank you.
+Doug K You are welcome! Hope you have a project of your own underway. Enjoy everything! -Gordon
Really like the details of this design, seems highly functional and easy to set up. I built a 3 tube, 12-1/2 f/5.5 structure using the Dobsonian telescope book but didn't follow all of the suggestions, esp. when it called for design of the mirror cell.( it seemed too complicated) I ended up using a 6 point design using calculations from PLOP after it was revised. The 6 points are 1 inch diameter dowels glued and screwed to the cell, leaving about 1/2" of space for air to circulate between the mirror and the cell. The mirror adheres to the cell with a Permatex silicone. There are also 2 edge support pieces made from wood. The cell pivots on a 3/4"d. ball bearing in the center between two washers- no need for springs. I store the scope in a basement with a microfiber cloth over the mirror and a plastic disc ( a planisphere) on top of that- the mirror is 7 years old and the coating still looks new.
I'll bet you get a lot of enjoyment out of that telescope! The f/5.5 scope is a little longer than average, so I expect you get some great views of the planets and the moon. What kinds of eyepieces have you been using?
Gordon, thanks. I mask down the scope to about 4-3/4" to clear the secondary when viewing the planets and for eyepieces I've stuck with all 1-1/4" barrels. Mainly the Meade Series 4000 super wide 13.8 and 18 mm's, a Celestron Ultima short barlow, 26 mm silvertop, and a few others. I'm satisfied with views from just about any scope, but false color from some refractors and shaky mounts aren't much fun. Great advice on keeping the mirror covered and away from sunlight
What a beautiful telescope!
Juan David Barrada Thanks! Much appreciated.
I really love wooden project
Great telescope! I from Brazil!
honorio sergio Thanks! Hope you are getting better observing weather than we have here!
this is impressive
Beautiful piece my ,man!!!!!!
Roy Hemion Thanks, Roy... glad you like it!
Hope your scope will be famous as teeter and obesession! It's beautiful!!
Jeongwoo Seo Hi, Jeongwoo... Thanks for the complement! On the 18" Renegade that we are building for you, we have designed in a bunch of new features. The UTA design will be shorter, as we are going with a new spider modification. The bearing curves will be removable and the bearing supports will be removable. We are shipping these all over the world, now, so we need to be able to pack and ship them efficiently. And that gives you the added benefit that it will fit far more easily into a small car! Thanks again... -Gordon
amazing!!!! greetings from brazil
sacrip tex Thanks! Hope you are having good observing weather. We're getting yet another snowstorm here. It never seems to stop!
I wonder if a diamond tipped lathe could be used, to cut the parabola into the surface then finish polish it out?. maybe something like a miniature Betts mill, the one i worked on had a 12 ft turn table. and cut 16pcs of 700lb wedge shaped segments of cast iron into a shape that looked like a giant convex lens laying on its flat side used for lapping at the caterpillar corp.
Diamond lathe work is used by some high-end shops for forming glass. Not an amateur method, though, if you are trying to get accuracy to a few millions of an inch.
Are all mirror cells (for all apertures) made of wood or for the larger aperture telescopes they are of metal?
Our mirror cells are being redesigned this summer. Some of the metal parts are being replaced with polyurethane parts. So they will be all three: wood, metal and polyurethane.
Thanks Gordon.
I like the open design. Is there any convection distortion at all? I shouldn't think so. Oh, how I see the cloak being installed.
Hi, Alex. Thanks! The mirror surround is quite low, so there is airflow around the mirror on top, if you either don't put on the shroud, or if you roll it up from the bottom a bit. So the mirror cools down really fast, and you don't need boundary layer fans. I've never seen heat effects unless I've just move it from cool to hot, or hot to cool. Even 15 minutes of acclimation takes care of the problem, pretty much. Large scopes take a little longer, of course!
Yeah. Makes sense. Those are heavy pieces of glass. I had seen somewhere that convection currents in the tube were causing some defocusing of the image. Up in NY the best time to look at the sky is winter for some reason. I don't know exactly what causes the currents as we never had heaters or anything near the telescopes. Just a sort of chimney effect I suppose.
Sir please help me to made a 16'' mirror
can you pls show the end results, like Jupiter through this mirror?
+Indian Anime Guild Hi! It's too late to do a photo through the telescope, as it has already been shipped to the client overseas. But I have a few comments from him in South Korea after he had first light: "I finally went field to get first light on your 12inch mirror yesterday. I was suprised when I saw the Saturn with my 7mm eyepiece as I never saw this crisp Saturn before! My son and wife gave an exclamation of suprise! And when I changed eyepiece with 3.5mm, I exactly saw the Cassini gap. It was amazing experience. "
wow those are some very costly eyepieces. I have a 9mm i got with 144 of mine, which is blurry from within,many some displacement of lens. Anyway I had asked that because I wanted to see how good a DIY mirror works. I wish to make a telescope myself although mirrors are still very costly, its cheaper to buy a telescope than make one, I though of making primary mirror but glass for that is still costly even after 10 years. Thanks for your reply.
Nice
hey Gordon would it be possible to cast small scope mirrors like up to say 150mm with a parabolic shape cast into them, instead of a flat blank so that all would be needed is a finish polish on them then aluminize?. I mean you could cast them with different focal points for different length scopes, then only have to polish and coat. that would save a lot of time and labor and make the smaller mirrors more reasonably priced so that more people could get into the hobby. I don't think it would affect a business like yours, except maybe give you more work polishing. but I could be wrong because I am not as smart, as I used to be when I was young and healthy. maybe you could start a small side business making small parabolic mirrors, and take a bite out of GSO's profits.
Casting will not give you a surface accurate enough to go directly to polishing. You would still need to grind. And most materials you could use for casting aren't well suited to making astronomical mirrors.
Let's 3D print it!
We 3D print a lot of tools and aids of all sorts. Emerson and I are looking right now at a printer with an 18" square bed so we can print bigger projects.
add some wooden dowel rod locator pins and make alignment simple
Good idea!
@@GordonWaite thanks
Dah !
Mr Waite your a true craftsmen bar none. Thank You for your video's and letting us in on true artisanship. SWH.