Minimalist 12 inch Dobsonian Scope

· 12 inch f/5 primary from Hands On Optics

· ½ inch Russian Birch Ply throughout – doubled for rails

· 5/8 inch T6 aluminum trusses

· Total scope weight is 31 pounds with finder and 1 ¼ eyepiece

· Rails roll on shower enclosure nylon wheels

· Rocker box turns on easyglider pads

· Piano wire vanes for spider – minimal defraction spikes

I needed a platform to test a 12” primary mirror in varying conditions before continuing with a 300mm binocular. After visiting Mel Bartels super site I looked at a bunch of minimalist scope sites from his links and gained enough information to build this scope. Greg Babcock’s lightweight scopes http://www.synrgistic.com/astro show the way.

The scope proved very handy and the mirror has surpassed my best hopes.

My friend Alan Scott has refined this design to fit in his ultra compact Honda sports car and to accommodate 2 inch oculars – these changes and other improvements in the minimalist design required significant engineering on his part – see the excellent results on his web site at http://www.xmission.com/~alanne

Since I wrote the above, Alan has gone on to make a great ultralight 16” scope of similar design which I had the good fortune of using under dark skies at Okie Tex last year.

Home