Telescope History

[Lyinxz]

Hey guys,

I was just thiking the other day about the history of telescopes, since most the members on here seem to be *cough* in thier mid ages:P, what were telescope like when you first started astronomy?

Expensive?
What size optics were avilable?
And what I wonder - has the qaulity of "seeing" improved through better optics? or is it more or less the same as 20 or 30 years ago?

I wonder also the future of telescopes, what kind of improvments and upgrades do you see comming for the normal amature telescope?

I cant think of any other way that you could really improve the average telescope except by using larger optics.

I supose maybe on day it will all be digital imagery, perhaps when you look at saturn, the telescope will process the incomming light and sort of enhance the image using digital EP's or some crazy idea like that :screwy:

Would love to hear some of your ideas/opinions! :thumbsup:

[bmitchell82]

Well i belive its just like the car industry. BMW, Mercs, Jags, TRD, Nizmo are all on the cutting edge of technology, after a while it filters down to the common user as a standard not a option.

for instances Adaptive optics is only in use on some really high end gear with multiple mirrors. who knows we might soon have that same ability to have a half meter + mirror system in a dome for not much more than 5k in the next 10- 15 year.

As always things take time and the chinese make that time frame shrink! :D god bless there little souls for giving minions of the stars like me the chance to get decent mirrors for diddly squat!

[erick]

And better mechanicals........:thumbsup:

[Glenhuon]

When I got my first scope 20 odd years ago a 6" reflector was classed as a large amateur telescope and a decent GEM mount was pretty expensive to a working fella. Nowadays they are pretty well entry level and much more affordable. Quality has improved too.
I doubt there will be many major changes in the basic scope/eyepiece design side. Probably more and improved electronics.
Wireless comms for guiding and imaging, getting rid of the birds nest of cables needed at the moment would be my ideal.

Bill

[leon]

There maybe better equipment available today, than 30 years ago when I started, but I expect that one would still see the same thing.. :shrug:

Leon :thumbsup:

[Wavytone]

When I started in the early 1970's...

... many had made their Newtonians using the book by Texereau and the ATM books - 6" f/8 were pretty common, most serious amateurs had an 8" f/7, a few 10" f/7 and a couple had 12" f/5, one had made a 12.5" classical cassegrain. Like many before me I made a 4.25" f/5, then a 6" f/8, then an 8" f/7 mirror over the years 1972-75.

The Dobsonian hadn't been invented and most newtonians including mine were on equatorial mounts, typically with 1.5" heavy steel axes in bush bearings, a 6" or 8" worm wheel made of bakelite or aluminium if you were lucky, and a synchronous motor running off the mains for tracking. No autoguiders, and tracking manually with a guidescope was serious tedious. Few scopes were really up to doing photography through the scope. Big, heavy and only just portable.

Refractorites were typically using 3" - 4" Unitrons, invariably f/15 achromats on very tall wooden tripods. Mostly the Unitron altaz mount, a few had the equatorial clock drive.

A few guys had orange Celestron 8's... one had a Questar 3.5"...

No electronics - for photography you used a guidescope with a cross-hair eyepiece, and tracking in RA was usually very limited, tracking in dec was done with a screw driving a tangent arm.

Speaking of photography - no digital cameras - an SLR body was an expensive luxury at that time and you used 35mm film. Push-processing ektachrome film was common. If you had access to a machne shop, you could make a "cold camera" in which the film was clamped to a perspex plug and chilled with frozen C02 to stop reciprocity failure, giving lovely results (for that era).

Eyepieces were really dreadful compared to modern ones - very ordinary kellners, bad orthos, maybe a plossl if you were lucky, and none were parfocal. The big gun in widefield eyepieces was a 60mm Unitron kellner, in a 2" barrel.

CNC machining had not been invented, neither had the Crayford focuser. A big Unitron rack and pinion focusser was something to aspire to (if you were upmarket). A very lucky few had the Unitron "Unihex" (a rotating gadget that held 6 eyepieces).

Oh yes and at the silly season the shops were full of 40 and 60mm Trashco refractors, which were as useless then as they are now.

[Lyinxz]

haha gota love the chinese!

Wavytone sounds like you have seen it all!!

[Wavytone]

I started to slide out of amateur astronomy from about 1993 and got rid of my stuff shortly after as I could see it was going to change a lot. Until now... Looking back the most significant changes I'd say they are:

- Dobsonian mounts,

- Digital imaging and autoguiding, both cameras and CCD heads;

- CNC machining and what that has done for mounts and telescope parts;

- modern glass types, with respect to what that has done for eyepieces and refractor objectives, and

- what the Chinese manufacturers have done to costs.

[bmitchell82]

hehehe this is the same kind of discussion every generation has i belive, My fathers father always thought his music was crap head banging stuff (Black sabbeth, Jethro Tull) then he heard my music, ohhh that bloody doof doof music its crap.! :)

Wavytone, i belive that your generation although you did it hard, you where mighty proud of what you achived, i mean you made it from the ground up.

Our generation is mighty proud of what we have done, mastering the age of digital.

We all face our struggles and all had to learn it all from scratch.!

Sure as technology is progressing, better construction techniques are obtained, and better quality of amature optics are seen.

I belive that the same amount of difference will be seen in the amature world between 30 years ago and now, and the next 30 years. who knows what some smart cookie will come up with. but rest asured it will be something that none of us will be able to comprehend at the moment and when it arrives we will be saying how the hell did we do it before.????????:rolleyes:;)

[Zuts]

These days there are dozens of trashy 80 degree eyepieces but i suspect 30 years from now there will be dozens of 100 degree ethos equivalents at very low prices.

The meade DSI III is at a bit over 1 megapixel. 30 years from now and assuming Meade still exists i imagine the entry level Meade 300 buck imager would be at least the eqivalent and probably better than an SBIG 11000 STL.

Apo's are by definition colour free. 30 years from now this will still be the case :), but they wont cost 8,000 AUD for a 6 inch Apo.

Meade and GSO currently have an affordable 16 inch DOB. 30 years from know i reckon they will have an affordable 24 inch dob.

Cheers
Paul

[Kal]

Out of all the innovations listed in this thread so far, I find the dobsonian the most amazing. It is such a simple concept, it didn't require technology or improved manufacturing techniques to be invented, and it revolutionised amateur astronomy.

Sometimes the most simple and obvious innovations are the best :)

For the next 30 years? I think replacing the glass blanks used for todays reflectors with a lightweight material would be a massive step forward allowing big dobs to be light and manageable. Technology will move forward as it always does, and cameras will get larger/cheaper sensors. When a full frame mono CMOS chip is released we will see a flood of astrocameras rushing out to use it, it will be alot cheaper than the equivalent CCD chip. As computers get more powerful, imagine seeing a real time registax processed image on your pc? Forget about post processing, set your parameters beforehand and watch the screen for a real time "live" view of the last 900 processed frames.

[bmitchell82]

... I agree Kal! my partner freaked out when she saw how big the 10" sw was :D the first question i got asked was how much did that cost you a couple of grand... :D hahaha when i told her how much she settled down again and then was happy when i showed her Jupiter and a few Dso's when compared to "old blue" hehehe.