Bazzi02 asked: Can I make a telescope with everyday materials?
Please give me clear directions.
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on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Astronomy & Space.
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September 24th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Two convex lenses. That’s the “thicker in the middle” kind. As you hold them up in front of you, it becomes clear how far they need to be apart to focus at a particular distance. They don’t need to be inside of sliding tubes. Regards, Larry. larry
September 27th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Go to and type in how to build a telescope. Johnno
September 28th, 2009 at 2:48 am
You need two lenses of different focal lengths. You put the long focal length one in front. This might be a low-power magnifying glass, a lens from a pair of reading glasses, or a lens scavenged from an old telescope or binocular. For an eyepiece, you need a shorter focal length, that is, higher power, magnifying lens. Something like a jeweler’s loupe works well.
You position the eyepiece behind the objective (front) lens so that you can see a magnified image. If you are looking at a bright scene, you can put a piece of paper behind the objective and find the distance at which it forms an image. Your eyepiece will actually be magnifying that image, so the distance between the two lenses is the objective-ti-image distance plus the focal distance of the eye lens.
The image will be upside-down, and if you are just using a simple lens, it will have a good deal of color fringing. injanier
September 29th, 2009 at 3:23 am
You can use everyday materials for everything but the mirrors and/or lenses. If you use cheap lenses not specifically made for a telescope the images will be terrible. If you have lots of time and patience, you can grind your own mirror. It will save a lot of time if you start with a mirror blank instead of ordinary glass. Philip J