My Experience With a 3" home-made Newtonian Reflector Telescope
Back in the summer of 2006, I finally decided to get my hands on a good telescope that would allow me to properly observe objects that I always wanted to take a closer look at. So, after buying a 400-buck refractor telescope that had a pathetic tripod stand and probably had a magnification of 15X, I deiced that I wanted something better. After some hunting around, my father found out about a man who built his own telescopes out of industrial materials at home - materials as simple as PVC pipes for tubes, and went through rigorous procedures of mirror grinding and polishing and finally collimating it all to get a good end product, despite being basic and home-made.
After making a choice between some telescopes he had for sale, I settled for a 3-inch (aperture) telescope. The built was clearly home-made. The tube was of PVC, the tripod was made of wood, and he provided 2 eyepieces of different resolutions, but overall, it was sturdy and I was certain I did not have to worry about it. For a price as less a Rs. 4000, it was not a bad deal. My first observation subject was the moon. It looked bright enough and details were clearly visible. That made me go in for the buy in the first place. Only later did I realize that even with a telescope, Delhi was not the best place for star-gazing, especially during summers. Except the occasional look at Saturn and its rings (and Titan), or Jupiter and the Galilean moons, the telescope went widely unused. Later that year (one month later, to be exact), dad was posted to Nagpur, so we all had to shift. That made me worried about my telescope and its condition after reaching there. My worries were magnified when the luggage delivery was delayed because the truck carrying it hadn't left Delhi for a long time (which we found out only after some detailed investigation), and heavy rains made it worse as I was not supposed to let my telescope be exposed to water. Nonetheless, my telescope reached safely with no more errors than some in the mirror collimation, which I successfully fixed later.
My experience was best in Nagpur, which had relatively clearer skies throughout the year. Most of 2006 and a 2007 went in spending hours with my eye sticking to the eyepiece of the telescope, looking at random objects, aimlessly looking for the dimmest stars. I later installed Stellarium (covered previously in the blog) which allowed me to track objects in the sky and accurately spot them and look at them through the telescope. I was the happiest when I succeeded in spotting the Orion Nebula, and Venus in its Quarter phase, and Pleiades, and despite having looked at them a hundred times before, there was an undying charm present in Jupiter, Saturn, Orion Nebula, Venus and Pleiades that made me look at them over and over and over again. Nothing beats having a far-away object in space brought much closer for you to look at. Even though it had a lousy magnification of 90X and could magnify just enough to highlight the fact that "Saturn has rings", I treasured my telescope a lot. Later that year, something tragic happened. One of the thin metal plates holding the secondary plane mirror of the telescope broke, rendering it useless Numerous failed attempts to put it back in place left me heartbroken, and dad refused to buy a new one, saying we could fix it. I preferred not to, and wait till I can get a better one.
Till date, I am waiting for that "new, better telescope", but haven't got it yet due to a lot of financial restrictions, but the day I get all the money to buy whatever I want, a telescope will be the first thing I buy.