Travel telescope?

[ollypenrice]

Inspired by Nigelcampbell's post and by a brief disussion on the wonders of folding bikes in the lounge, I was thinking about folding (or splittable) refractors. Why not?

Maybe the tube could be split in half and brought together by means of a fine threaded, machined casting on both halves. It could even be made as an aftermarket fitting for those willing to saw their tubes in half. (Such people mght be too few to generate much of a market!!)

A manufacturer like Skywatcher could do this easily though, as an option, and a 4 or maybe even 5 inch refractor coud be carried on to flights. While they were about it SW could make some hollow plastic counterwieights to be filled with water on arrival.

Olly

[Paxo]

My Pentax 75 has a central field flattening lens to which the two halves of the scope screw onto so it is very do-able. I'm just about to get a replacement rear piece made a couple of cm shorter to give me a bit more in-focus.

Steve

[CGolder]

Why not make it telescopic instead? it would solve the problem of exposing the internals to dust etc, would only need 1 telescopic part

[johninderby]

Stellarvue already does a split tube 80mm refractor that does pack into a very small space so there is no reason others shouldn't do it.

John

Notice that there's one of these SV80EDs up for sale on Astrobuysell at the moment.

[A McEwan]

Looks very nice. I like the idea of hollow counterweights too, Olly - inspired! Split-tube dobsonians have been made for years, so why not more refractors indeed?

[yeti monster]

Some cheapo bodybuilding weight sets are plastic shells with some form of ballast inside. These could easily be modified, a simple filler/drain plug and Robert becomes the brother of either of your parents...

[johninderby]

I wonder how much someone like Epsilon Telescopes would charge to machine up a hollow counterweight? It would have to be larger to compensate for the lower density of whatever you filled it with.

Here's a link showing the various densities of materials.

http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm

John

[JCJC]

I think some of the Borg refractors are modular?

Good idea!

Jordan