telescope techniques

Sky & Telescope February 2000 125

Woodshop Eyepi eces
By Chuck Hards
N
ew t el escope owner s ar e oft en
surprised to discover that a set of
high-quality eyepieces can easily
cost as much as the price of the telescope
itself. Fortunately, there is an alternative.
By purchasing carefully selected surplus
lenses it is possible to make an eyepiece
for as little as $15 that will outperform
some commercially made eyepieces cost-
ing up to four times as much. By using
wood and stock aluminum tubing, I
made eyepieces with nothing more than
a saw and an inexpensive drill press. I
call the results Woodshop Eyepieces.
Making Choices
The eyepieces I chose to build are of the
symmetrical type a close cousin of the
popular Plssl variety. This design pro-
vides a good balance between perform-
ance and ease of construction.
Furthermore, symmetri-
cal eyepieces can be
Budget Eyepi eces and Barl ow Lenses
It has been said that you cant saveany money building your own tele-
scopethesedays certainly, themorecomponents you buy instead of
build, thetruer this statement becomes. However, even themost die-hard
of ATMs will usually buy eyepieces and Barlow lenses and accept thecosts
involved. In this months department our authors show how you can build
your own at a fraction of thecost of commercial units and havefun at the
sametime. Theviews of Jupiter I had with theWoodshop Eyepieces and
homemadeBarlows weresatisfyingly crisp and remarkably ghost-free.
Gary Seronik
1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
126 February 2000 Sky & Telescope
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built using off-the-shelf optical compo-
nents. The only lenses required are a pair
of matching achromats (lenses made of
two components cemented together to
form a single element) arranged so that
their biconvex elements are facing each
other and nearly in contact.
A necessary rst step is to determine
what focal lengths will produce the range
of magnications best suited to your tele-
scope and observing needs. A telescopes
magnication is calculated by dividing its
focal length by the focal length of the eye-
piece (both expressed in the same units).
The effective focal length (e) of my eye-
pieces is close to half the focal lengths of
the individual lenses. The actual formula
is e =f
1
f
2
/(f
1
+f
2
d), where f
1
is the
focal length of the rst lens, f
2
is the focal
length of the second lens, and dis the sep-
aration of their principal planes. The prin-
cipal planes for these lenses are located ap-
slight differences in glass types and coat-
ings. Make sure you choose lenses that are
corrected for visual wavelengths; the pres-
ence of a blue or purple antireection
coating is a good, though not foolproof,
indicator of this. However, the lack of coat-
ings does not necessarily mean that the
lens is unsuitable. If this all sounds a little
bit chancy, dont worry. Only once in 11
purchases have I received achromats that I
couldnt use for these eyepieces; the key is
knowing exactly what you want.
Time to Get Busy
The rst step is to make the housing for
the lenses. Begin by cutting a length of
hardwood with a table saw, or handsaw
and miter box. Unlike softwood, hardwood
resists splitting. I chose octagonal walnut
stock, but you can use square, round, or
any other stock that strikes your fancy.
When you cut each piece leave about
3
4
inch extra in case you make a mistake.
Carefully clamp the piece in a drill press
and make a
1
4-inch-deep bore for the 1
1
4-
inch barrel using a Forstner bit (see dia-
gram on facing page). Make sure the piece
is centered accurately beneath the bit. Next,
select a drill bit just a little larger than the
diameter of the lenses and drill a hole deep
enough to accommodate both lenses as
well as the thickness of the lens spacer.
Bore the eyehole
1
16 to
1
32 inch smaller than
the diameter of the lenses. This will pre-
vent the lenses from falling out the top of
the eyepiece. You can now cut the wood to
its nal length, leaving no more than
1
16
inch of wood on the top. Anything thicker
than this and you will have a hard time
getting your eye close enough to the eye
lens. Shape and sand the wood smooth,
spray it with clear acrylic paint, and allow
it to dry. Coat the inside at black.
Assembly begins by preparing the
lenses. If the lenses you purchased dont
come with blackened edges, you can do
it yourself with a permanent black mark-
er. This simple procedure really makes a
noticeable difference in contrast by cut-
ting down scattered light. Insert the eye
lens so that the negative element faces
your eye. Next comes the spacer, made
from a piece of 0.020-inch styrene-plas-
tic sheet purchased from a hobby shop
for about a dollar. Score it with a sharp
knife to the proper width and snap it off
Spacer Principal planes
Eye
lens
Field stop
(optional)
Woodshop Eyepi ece
1
1
/4" barrel
Retaining
ring Positive
element
(biconvex)
Negative
element
(planoconvex)
Field
lens
Using surplus optics, hardware-store materials, and common tools, Chuck
Hards made a set of high-quality eyepieces for a fraction of the cost of
equivalent commercial units. Pictured here are Woodshop Eyepieces of
29- (right), 23- (left), and 14.8-millimeter focal lengths.
proximately where the positive and nega-
tive elements meet at the circumference of
the lens. In practice, the physical separa-
tion of the two lenses is close to zero, but
the separation of the principal planes can
be several millimeters or more with long-
focal-length models.
Eyepieces made with long-focus lenses
give sharp views, but the nished eye-
piece can wind up with a focal length too
long to be useful and a disappointingly
narrow apparent eld. Remember that
the size of the barrel ultimately limits the
maximum size of the true eld. For ex-
ample, by choosing the appropriate lens-
es, you could make a 60-mm, low-power
eyepiece, but in a 1
1
4-inch barrel, this
would have a true eld no larger than an
eyepiece with half the focal length and
twice the magnication. In practice, the
lower power would not show more sky.
Short-focus lenses, on the other hand,
usually result in an eyepiece with an ex-
cessively curved eld of view and chro-
matic aberration. From personal experi-
ence, I have found that achromats in the
f/2 to f/3 range work the best.
By their nature, surplus optics are rarely
stocked in large quantities, so I always have
a list of substitutions handy when order-
ing, just in case I cant get exactly what I
want. Also, keep in mind that lenses of the
same stock number may not be from the
same manufacturing lot and may have
1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
Cut to length
1
1
/
4
"
1
/16" to
1
/32" less
than lens diameter
1
/16" to
1
/32"
greater than
lens diameter
Sky & Telescope February 2000 127
the sheet. With scissors, cut the piece
longer than you need and gradually
shorten it until it ts snugly inside the
bore with the ends touching. Of course,
this should be painted black also. Now
slide in the eld lens with the positive el-
ement facing the eye lens.
The last piece to go down the bore is
the lens-retaining disk. It is made from
1
32-inch aircraft plywood, also bought at
the hobby shop. Cut the rough shape with
scissors, then sand it to nal size using a
sanding block and 120-grit paper for a snug t. The inside diameter is drilled to
be the same size as the eyehole. I prefer to
use a Uni-bit for this task. It is a type of
step-drill that can cleanly cut many differ-
ent hole sizes with a single bit. A light
sanding will clean up any slivers left on
the retainer. Paint it black on both sides
and place it in the bore. Friction should
keep it in place, but if it is too loose, use a
little wood glue to hold it in position.
The 1
1
4-inch barrel can be cut from ei-
ther a chrome-plated brass sink-trap ex-
tension or aluminum tubing found at
most home-improvement centers. Nei-
ther tubing is perfectly round and some
pieces wont even t in a 1
1
4-inch focuser.
To be on the safe side, take a focuser t-
Get t i ng t he Goods
Surplus optics can be purchased from
the following companies:
American Science & Surplus
847-982-0870; info@sciplus.com;
www.sciplus.com
(Be sure to ask for its optics catalog.)
Apogee, Inc.
815-923-1602; apogee@mc.net;
www.astronomy-mall.com/regular/
products/apogee/
Surplus Shed
610-926-9226; surplushed@aol.com;
www.surplusshack.com
Here are all the materials needed to make
any of the eyepieces described in the accom-
panying text: two lenses, hardwood stock,
aluminum tubing, and small pieces of
1
32-
inch aircraft plywood and styrene plastic.
Preparing the wooden body of the eyepiece
consists of drilling holes of three different di-
ameters and then cutting the stock to the
exact length, making sure to leave enough ma-
terial at the eye end to serve as a lens retainer.
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1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
128 February 2000 Sky & Telescope
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Drilling the necessary holes in the eyepiece
body must be done with care. Double-check
that the piece of wood stock is securely
clamped and that it is accurately centered
beneath the bit. The author recommends the
use of a Forstner bit for clean and accurate
diameters. Courtesy Chuck Hards.
ting or star diagonal
with you to the hard-
ware store and test
tubing pieces until
you nd one that ts.
The aluminum tube
can be reduced in di-
ameter by a few thou-
sandths of an inch if
you wet-sand it ag-
gressively with 320-grit paper.
If you are using the sink-trap exten-
sion, cut it to length with a tubing cutter.
This will roll the ends slightly, making it
easier to insert into the telescope focuser.
Use #4 sheet-metal screws, countersunk
into the wooden cap to hold the tube.
For my eyepieces I used the thicker alu-
minum tubing, cut to length with
a hacksaw. You can bevel the end using a
router and a 45 chamfering bit. Make
a jig to hold the barrel since the piece is
too small to safely hold freehand. It is
secured with #4-40 athead machine
screws, which require that three holes be
drilled and tapped in the barrel. As
a nal touch, I painted a at-black annu-
lus around the eye lens, to help reduce
glare.
Although I didnt bother, some readers
will want to add a eld stop so that the
edge of the eld of view is sharply delin-
eated. You can make one using either the
plastic or aircraft plywood, much as you
did the lens-retaining ring. The main dif-
ference is that the inside diameter of the
eld stop is largely a matter of personal
preference. Slide it up and down the
metal barrel until you nd the location
where it is in sharp focus.
Readers interested in exploring eye-
piece making in more detail should
check out Sam Browns classic All About
Telescopes(Edmund Scientic) or the ex-
cellent TelescopeOptics: A Comprehensive
Manual for Amateur Astronomersby Har-
rie G. J. Rutten and Martin A. M. van
Venrooij (Willmann-Bell). You can also
visit the Web site of Peter J. Smith, an
Australian amateur who maintains an in-
formative, interesting site at www.users.
bigpond.com/pji/. I have a page on Roger
Phillipss Web site at www.crbest.com/
astronomy/ that details some of the other
eyepieces I have made.
Chuck Har ds has been making telescopes
sincethelate60s.
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Sky & Telescope February 2000 129
A
s a useful t el escope accessor y,
the Barlow lens has few rivals. A
Barlow is basically a concave
(negative) lens that, when inserted a short
distance inside a telescopes focal plane,
increases the instruments effective focal
length. You can turn an f/5 scope into an
f/10 or f/15, boosting the magnifying
power of any eyepiece proportionally
while preserving a long-focus eyepieces
convenient eye relief. Barlows work equal-
ly well with refractors, reectors, and
catadioptric scopes and add only very
slightly to their overall physical size.
The most popular are 2 Barlows
mounted in a standard 1
1
4-inch-diameter
tube. Achromatic Barlows usually have a
two-element lens, while apochromatic
ones or those with higher amplication
factors (3 to 5) may have three
or more elements. A listing of
commercial Barlows available
is given in Sky & Telescopes
July 1997 issue, page 62. Their
prices then ranged from as low
as $38 to as high as $259.
Its quite easy to make your
own Barlow lens using a
cheap photographic telecon-
verter (TC) lens from a used-
camera store or pawnshop. The
TC lens, which is essentially a
highly color-corrected, multi-
coated Barlow, is used to dou-
ble or triple the effective focal
length of a camera lens. Most
used TCs show little or no sign
of wear. They often sell for as
little as $8 to $15. The Barlow is such a
useful and versatile accessory
that I seldom observe with-
out one, which means that I
own a batch of Barlows, all
but one of which I made
from TC lenses.
A Weekend Project
For your homemade Barlow,
choose a well-known brand
of TC such as Pentax, Vivitar,
or Soligor. Carefully check the
lens surfaces for scratches or
damage to the coating.
The lenses are invariably
mounted in a black-anodized
aluminum barrel threaded on
the outside. This barrel has
been screwed into the TC body
from the rear to a precise depth,
Do-it-yourself Barlow lenses. A handy and relatively inexpensive
optical accessory for all types of telescopes, the Barlow lens can easily
double, or even triple, the range of magnification afforded by your exist-
ing eyepiece collection. As explained in the text, you can make simple Bar-
lows out of cheap, used photographic teleconverter (TC) lenses and 1
1
4-inch
sink extension tubes.
Homemade Barl ow Lenses
By Ernie Pfannenschmidt
When placed just inside
the telescopes focus, a
Barlow lens increases the
telescopes effective focal
length. This amplifies the
magnifying power of any
eyepiece while preserving
the eyepieces eye relief
the distance between the
eye (where the exit pupil
is) and the eyepiece lens.
Also, a Barlow does not
significantly increase the
length of the scopes opti-
cal path.
Field
stop
Exit
pupil
Eyepiece
Barlow
lens
and it is held in position by a threaded
locking ring with two slots or dimples for
a spanner wrench to grasp. The latter tool
is seldom required to undo the ring. A
gentle counterclockwise tap on a jewelers
screwdriver or micro chisel inserted at an
angle into one of the slots will usually
loosen the locking ring. Dont loosen the
retaining ring inside the lens assembly
that holds the actual lenses in place. When
you remount the lens as a Barlow, this re-
taining ring should face the eyepiece end
of the Barlows drawtube.
Some manufacturers put a drop of liq-
uid bonding agent on the locking ring to
prevent vibrations from loosening the
assembly. Sometimes this liquid can seep
into the screw threads and harden, thus
making lens removal almost impossible.
The solution is to gently but rmly
clamp the TC in a vise with its optical
axis at a right angle to the vise jaws. Use
a ne-toothed hacksaw to cut the unit
parallel to the optical axis to a depth just
shy of the lens barrel. Unclamp the TC,
rotate it 180, reclamp, and saw the op-
posite side. If this is done right the two
halves of the TC can then be pulled or
pried apart and the lens barrel removed
unscathed. Be careful not to let alu-
minum lings scratch the lens.
For the Barlows drawtube, buy a
1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
130 February 2000 Sky & Telescope
short, 1
1
4-inch ared chrome-plated sink
extension tube at a plumbing or build-
ing-supply outlet. Its ared end will ac-
cept standard 1
1
4-inch eyepieces, while
the narrower end slides into the tele-
scopes focuser. These tubes can vary
slightly in diameter from one manufac-
turer to another, so, if possible, take along
the focuser and an eyepiece when
shopping and try out various tubes.
Select the one with the best t.
Measure the length of the barrel
of your longest focal-length eye-
piece. If the large end of the exten-
sion tube, as measured from the
are, is longer than the eyepiece bar-
rel, you may cut the tube to size with the
hacksaw. (Wrap a turn or two of mask-
ing tape around the tube before cutting.
This prevents marring the chrome nish
if the saw blade skids off the mark, as it
will.) After sawing, square off and deburr
the tube end with a le. Next, measure
about four inches from the are toward
the narrow end and repeat the proce-
dure. Voil! You now have a Barlow
drawtube. Once its inside has been coat-
ed with at-black enamel paint and al-
lowed to dry, you can install the lens.
Carefully wrap masking tape around
the lens barrel just enough to give it a fric-
tion t when inserted into the
drawtube. This may sound crude,
but it works well. Most TC lens
barrels are 0.625 to 0.75 inch long
Measuri ng a Barl ow Lens
A
Barlow lens works by diverging the light cone coming from a telescopes objec-
tive, thereby increasing the telescopes effective focal length. Thus, a 2 Barlow
on an f/8 scope effectively doubles the instruments focal ratio to f/16.
Putting it another way, a 26-millimeter eyepiece magnifies like a 13-mm when cou-
pled to a 2 Barlow.
The Barlows amplification factor that is, whether its a 2 or 3 is independ-
ent of the telescopes focal length and focal ratio. It is,
however, affected by the distance of the Barlows lens
from the eyepieces focal point (which is at the eyepieces field stop).
The simplest way to measure your Barlows amplification factor is with a telescope
under the stars. Using an eyepiece alone, and with the scopes motor drive off, time
how many seconds a star takes to cross the field of view through the center. Then do
the same with the Barlow in place, using the same star. The ratio of these times equals
the Barlows amplification.
For example, if the star takes 120 seconds to cross the field without the Barlow and
60 seconds with it, then the Barlows amplification is 120/60 = 2.
By Edwin L. Aguirre
To remove the barrel assembly containing the lens from the TC body, unscrew the locking ring
that holds the barrel in place. (Dont loosen the retaining ring inside the barrel that holds the
lens itself.) If the locking ring proves impossible to undo, you can carefully saw the TC body in
half on a vise, pry it apart, and then remove the lens barrel (bottom).
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Sky & Telescope February 2000 131
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The author made these drawings of Jupiter (top) and Mars in 1999 with a folded 3
1
4-inch f/15
refractor, a 15-millimeter Plssl eyepiece, and a 2.06 TC Barlow lens. The Barlow boosted his
scopes focal ratio to f/31 and its magnification from 83 to 171 power.
You can buy several TC lenses to make an array of Bar-
lows with different amplification factors.
night of steady seeing. Center the planet
in the eyepieces eld of view and focus
as sharply as you can. Turn off the
scopes motor drive and watch the
image as it drifts out of view. There
should be no degradation in the
images quality as it traverses the eld,
nor should false colors or halos form
around the planets disk. If you see such
aberrations, dont immediately blame the
TC lens four times out of ve the eye-
piece is actually the culprit. So try differ-
ent eyepieces. There are many used TCs
out there at practically giveaway prices,
waiting to enhance your high-power
viewing. Why not give them a try?
A retired engineer, Er nie Pfannenschmidt
has been an avid telescopemaker and tinkerer
for the past 58 years. He can be reached at
1734 Faireld Rd., Victoria, BC V8S 1G3,
Canada; 250-598-6197.
enough to keep the lenss optical axis
well aligned inside the drawtube. Clean all
lens surfaces with a good lens-cleaning so-
lution and a tissue before installing the as-
sembly into the drawtube.
TC lenses usually have a at front sur-
face and a convex or concave rear one. Be
sure to mount the lens so the front surface
is facing the incoming light cone. To cal-
culate your Barlows actual amplication
factor, whether its 2, 2.5, or something
else, see the box on the previous page.
A good test of the quality of your
homemade Barlow is to view Jupiter or
Saturn at high magnication during a
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