Show HN: Curiosity – DIY 6" Newtonian Reflector Telescope (curiosity-telescope.vercel.app)

81 points by big_Brain69 ↗ HN
A DIY Newtonian reflector telescope with dobsonian mount. A fun to do hobby project taking us closer to the moon and beyond. A lot of plans ahead on how to make it much better and portable but this was the first time me and my friend implemented or rather built a telescope.

Have a look at what all we have captured.

11 comments

[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 34.3 ms ] thread
I need to build a Dobson mount for my old homemade 8" F 5.5 Newton ... Why doesnt have a mount ? Well, it had 2 mounts in the past. It was built by my father, and we moved to another house, we need to ditch the mount. I managed to save the tube and the parts, and lately built an adapter to be attached to an EQ6 mount that I was allowed to use with a university astronomical association.
Great telescopes. It is a great vision to be in Space. Humanity can all be in space soon.
Site appears down. any mirrors?
"This deployment is temporarily paused"
Where would one go to learn about/find resources on the types of 3d printers best used for a telescope project like this?
3D printing does help a lot, you can probably scour the internet especially around printables and all but my biased opinion would be to get your hands dirty with wood as much as possible. You get to learn a lot!
"Ease of carrying the telescope with bag straps"

I like this, but...

Some of the best telescope buying advice I was ever given was to only buy a scope as big as you can carry/setup by yourself. It's hard to find time in one's schedule to take a scope somewhere, but it can be next to impossible to align schedules with another person. At least for a scope meant to take somewhere. Most people don't have a permanent setup though, so it's a pretty decent thing to consider.

The weight is only part of the equation, but also consider if it takes more than two hands to assemble.

Definitely agreed. So we realised this later, we were initially of the opinion to operate it from our lab but later did we get the idea to have bag straps to atleast make it a little bit more portable. Right now, we have been able to carry the entire setup individually, definitely a cumbersome task but people around us have been helpful. But as you rightly said to buy a scope as big as you can carry by yourself, this is something we would work on it in the near future.
really good budget build! I love the photos!

What's the next upgrade?