Recently a good friend of mine asked me if I wanted an old homemade Telescope that was in his parents garage gathering dust. They were getting rid of it because it has not been used for years and years and they needed the space. Without knowing much about the telescope, I responded “Heck yeah I want a telescope!” I have always looked up into the night sky and just be mesmerized by the beauty and mystery above.
An Interesting History
The telescope has a fairly interesting past. The telescope was home built around June 1950. T. H. Struck worked for an airplane manufacturer at the time, It appears that he used scrap pieces of airplane parts to assemble his Telescope.
Along with the telescope was a letter from a Mr. H.L. Freeman at a company called Telescopics in Los Angeles, California. It seems Mr. Struck sent in the Mirror to Telescopics to test the optical quality and apply a surface coating to protect the glass. This is an interesting read and gives you a glimpse into how business was done in the 1950’s before the convenience of modern communication.
I was unable to find any information about Telescopics, the company that Mr. Struck sent his mirror into be coated and inspected. I believe Telescopics was ran out of somebody’s garage because the address on the letter is for a suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles just like how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computers in a garage in Palo Alto, California in the 1976.
There is a spotting scope attached to the side of the telescope that helps you get the telescope pointed at the correct part of the sky. The spotting scope on the side has Japanese writing on it. I am not sure what this scope is originally for.
I will quote Mr. H.L. Freeman from the letter where he says the “Focal Length of the mirror is 29-3/4″ or F.7.” I will have to take his word on that.
What I Needed
Before I was able to connect my camera to the telescope, I needed to get a few things that would allow me to connect the two together. Because telescopes are not designed to be used with a camera, you need to get some special equipment to be able to mount the camera to the telescope and be able to focus through the eyepiece.
- Telescope Focuser – The telescope originally had a brass tube that held the eyepiece in place. To focus the telescope, you just slid the eyepiece optic in and out inside the brass tube with your hand, and there were no locking set screws that would allow you to lock the optic in place. Now image trying to mount a heavy DSLR up there, there was NO possible way would you be able to focus using that originally eye piece. I needed a replacement.
- T-Adapter > EOS Adapter Ring – This allowed me to connect the standard T-Adapter to a specific type of camera. Because I shoot Canon, I needed the adapter that was specifically for the Canon EOS system. There are also adapters that allow you to connect to the Nikon, Sony, Pentax, and probably every other system out there.
I was able to purchase a T-Adapter that had a Barlow lens included*
- Barlow Lens – A Barlow lens is a special lens that slides down into the eyepiece and allows the camera to be able to focus on the tiny image coming through the eyepiece. A Barlow lens also doubled the magnification of the image. I was able to zoom in much further on objects in the sky, but it made for finding those objects more of a challenge.
- T-Adapter – This is a special adapter that connects to your camera just like a lens. But instead of having a large lens, the T-Adapter looks like a funky tube that sticks straight out from the camera several inches. It is quite bizarre looking.
- Eyepiece Extension Tube – I needed the extension tube because without it, the camera was not positioned at the correct location to properly focus the image. It was just a blur without the extension, but when I added the extension tube, I was suddenly able to see and photograph the universe in all its glory.
Mounting the Camera to the Telescope
You can see how far the camera sticks out away from the telescope. It is probably a good 8 inches away from the body of the telescope. Having a large DSLR that weighs several pounds can really throw off the balance of the telescope. I needed to adjust the balance and have the camera sticking nearly straight up when mounted otherwise the telescope would just constantly want to tilt down.
The eyepiece I bought off of amazon was made to fit onto the side of a cylinder, I needed to cut and grind the base of the eyepiece to fit against a flat surface. The eyepiece is made of plastic so this was fairly easy to modify.
It was an exercise in trial and error to figure out the correct combination of lenses, extension tubes, and focusing to finally get a in focus image. In the end, I still had to use tape to hold the Barlow lens onto its extension tube because I had to only thread it on a tiny bit for it to reach that sweet spot.
Now that I was able to focus the telescope, it was time for the fun part. I had to wait for a clear night to be able to take some pictures of the moon. April in Oregon is not a great time for clear skies. But there were a few chances where I was able to see the moon and planets.
I used the live view mode on my Canon 7D II to see what the telescope could see. It was a little tricky to focus because when i touched the little focusing dial, the telescope would just start vibrating like mad and make it hard to see what i was doing.
I had to use the Barlow lens which doubles the image magnification, and I also used a cropped sensor camera which again magnifies the image 1.6x. Because of this the camera could not fit the entire moon into a single frame. So I shot a series of images with the exact same settings of all the parts of the moon which was visible that night and merged them together in Photoshop into a composite. The resulting image is much larger that a single image off the camera. I could print a huge print with a image as large as this.
I had a blast getting this old dusty telescope back up and running like never before. I know Mr. Struck, the man who poured his heart and soul into this telescope. I couldn’t imagine the amount of thought and effort went into making this device. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mr. Struck would think if he knew I was here, 65 years in the future mounting a computer/camera to his baby to be able to take pictures through it. I bet he would be proud that somebody would take the time to appreciate his creation. I doubt this telescope has ever had a picture taken though it. And the image that Mr. Struck could only see, I can finally capture in a photograph thanks to modern cameras.
Imagine somebody 65 years from now finding something that you built. I can not think of too many things that I have created that somebody would be excited for two generations from now. Plus I am using the telescope in a way Mr. Struck couldn’t even have imagined 65 years ago. Here’s to you Mr. Struck, I would have never made these images if it were not for you.
Future plans updates to the telescope.
- Take More Pictures – Because the night sky is always changing, I plan on taking lots more pictures as other planets and objects like comets and UFO’s to come into the sky where I can see them. I also need those clear summer nights to really get a good look, its still often cloudy here in Oregon in April.
- Replace Tripod – The biggest problem with using this tripod is getting it to aim properly at the object you want to look at. And once that object moves out of the field of view, you have to reposition the telescope. But because their is so much slop and play in tripod that holds the telescope, it is easily the most frustrating thing about using this telescope.
- Deep Cleaning – The telescope is pretty dirty. It has 65 years of grime, cobwebs, dust, and oxidation on it. This thing could use a good cleaning and possibly a paint job or special coating to spruce it up.
- Protective Carrying Case – If there is one thing besides Photography that I really enjoy, its carpentry. So why not smash both of my favorite hobbies together to create some sort of carrying case to be able to transport and protect the delicate telescope.
- Tracking Mount – I could get a tracking base that will automatically position the telescope in the correct orientation and track the objects as they move through the night sky. Tracking an object allows you to be able to take long exposures of those objects and you will start too see all the nebula’s, spiral galaxies, and whatever else is out there that is just outside the power of human eye. If I ever buy a new tripod for the telescope, I will definitely consider getting one that has a tracking mode.
