A Cardboard Kit for a Fully Functional Newtonian Reflecting Telescope!
The telescope is equipped with a Dobsonian mounting that makes pointing at celestial objects easy. The Newton telescope consists of a primary concave mirror and a secondary flat mirror which is at an angle to reflect the light in to the eyepiece. Reflecting mirrors tend to be better than refracting mirrors as they avoid chromatic aberration and thus the majority of the worlds telescopes use mirrors! The main BAADER glass mirror with SiO2 coating has a diameter of 70 mm and a focal length of 450 mm. Two eyepieces provide magnification factors of 16x and 30x, powerful enough for the observation of Moon Craters and even the Moons of Jupiter.
The telescope can be equipped with a dedicated solar filter to upgrade it for observations of the Sun.
In 1668 Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727) solved several problems of refracting telescopes when he invented the reflecting telescope. His great idea was to replace the convex objective lens with a hollow mirror. Light hitting the mirror is gathered, reflected onto a small angled flat mirror, and then directed sideways into the eyepiece. Newtons first mirrors, ground and polished by himself, had diameters of 25 and 50mm and a focal length of 300mm. With this, he achieved a magnification of about 30x.
The power of the AstroMedia Reflecting Telescope is very similar to Newton’s first instruments. The heart of the telescope is the main mirror, a spherical precision mirror made from ground and polished glass. It has a diameter of 70mm and a focal length of 450mm, and was specially calculated and produced for this kit. The eyepieces are fitted with acrylic glass lenses. With the help of Wolfgang Busch, Ahrensburg, Astromedia found lens arrangements that avoid colour aberrations and distortions as much as possible. The eyepieces achieve magnifications of 16x an 30x, which is sufficient to observe the craters on the Moon and, after proper adjustment of the main mirror, even the moons of Jupiter.
Of course a cardboard telescope can’t be compared to much more expensive industrially manufactured instruments. Nevertheless, this kit gives you the opportunity to follow Newton in putting together your own telescope and in the end you will be as surprised by the result as Newton was when he built his.
Curious Minds Did You Know: The Newtonian telescope is the first known functional telescope which uses a mirror. It was built in 1668 with the purpose of proving Newton’s theory that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours, which was later proved to be correct!
Main mirror: spherical, 70mm diameter, 450mm focal length, SiO2 coating, made by BAADER
Eyepieces: Ramsden 15mm, Steinheil 28mm
Size: 45 x 16 x 28 cm
Suitable for ages 14 and up.
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