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Amateur astronomers have a choice between instruments that are commercially available or becoming amateur telescope makers and building ones that are more suited to their needs. For the latter, the amateur has the freedom of instrument design as well as selection of specific components that represent the best available instead of compromising with what is provided with a commercially built unit.

Putting a fork into myths about Hubble's Galaxy classification

Your telescope's static balance can be achieved even when using a wide range of oculars.

In the current model of the Universe favored by most cosmologists the composition of the Universe is ~4.5% visible (baryonic) matter, 22.7% non-baryonic dark matter, and 72.8% dark energy...

... a beautiful grassy field for tent campers ( empty ), spotlessly clean bathrooms with hot showers, very nice camp sites with some shade trees right by the grassy field, a nice restaurant ... and if that wasn’t enough ... a challenging, well maintained 18 hole golf course! All this under the darkest skies in the US.

The definition of a planet and where the division is between Solar System objects that are planets and those that are not planets is currently in a state of disagreement among scientists.

In the summer of 1997, on my quest to interview the great commercial telescope makers in American history for a book, I made a pilgrimage to one of the most famous small towns in telescope history: New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Tales of Movie Stars and Mogey Refractors

This telescope mirror shadow tester doubles as an artificial star test.

Many eyepieces that I have found to be excellent in most respects I ultimately sold in part or whole due to the eyepiece having EOFB. What is Edge of Field Brightening?

In August 1997, the rumors were flying among amateur astronomy circles about the demise of Unitron. Certainly, their ads had long disappeared from the pages of magazines they once graced, such as Sky and Telescope...

The first time I saw a Tele Vue refractor was when I was responding to an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1995 for a Brandon 94mm refractor. I drove to the seller’s home in Mentor-on-the-Lake, and admired the baby-blue Brandon on a Unitron alt-azimuth mount, set up on the back porch overlooking Lake Erie. But another telescope next to it really took my breath away. It was a brass Renaissance on a Tele Vue Panoramic mount. “Are you selling that one?” I asked. I liked the Brandon. But I really wanted the Renaissance. I ended up buying both.

The first in a running series :-)

In the world of commercial telescopes, if Byers mounts are the Mack trucks of telescope mounts, then Losmandy mounts are the Dodge Ram trucks. The two companies are only located about 120 miles apart, in North Hollywood and Barstow, but both seemed on the other side of the world from each other, in scale, size, market and old school and new school philosophy.

The things that matter and the things that don't.