Sunday, August 13, 2017

World Priority : All-mirror TCT of Attila - Telescopul exclusiv catoptric cu optica inclinata al lui Attila

In 2008 my friend Attila Csillag introduced the all-mirror TCT telescope descibed below.
The birth and making of this  telescope was  purely empirical : no theorethical considerations or complex calculus behind it.
It was just something like ...''what if I will use a concave mirror as eyepiece instead of using a lens or a sistem of lenses - unlike to what  anybodye else done in the four centuries of  telescope making since the advent of the telescope''.
When I first mentioned this on the Forum of  ''Antique Telescope Society''  it woke up the interest of Peter Abrahams of the famous site  ''The history of the telescope&the binocular'' :

http://www.europa.com/~telscope/binotele.htm

It seem that Attila is the first telescope maker who devised a telescope in which the image is formed only by reflection.

As I already told , there is not math behind Attila's prototype, no fancy calculations and no insight about the conics providing the best optimized image with this telescope.
But this was the case with many telescope types or prototypes of the past.
For a while the picture of the all-mirror TCT telescope of Attila was present on the ''stellafane.org'' site.
But sometime latter  it was erased.
This is why I will repost here my article dedicated to this subject and kindly published by Kevin Brown in the February 2010 issue of the ''Practical Astronomy '' e-magazine.

Well , no wonder , we miss you Kevin Brown wherever you are...








More about ''Practical Astronomy''  and downloadable back issues :


This is the man , Csillag Attila , with some of his home-made telescopes.
Under his right hand there is so-called ''Mimoza/Mimosa '' a 125mm F/5 Newtonian reflector.
Under his left hand we see ''Cusiosul/ The Curious '' a 125mm F/9 Dobsonian telescope.
This telescope was used for hundreds of  outreach sessions ,mainly on the shores of the Mures River.
At left-background we see ''Leviathan'' 200mm F/10 Dobsonian and at right-background is ''Zold Sarkany/ The Green Dragon'' 190mm F/7.7 Dobsonian.
The mirror of the 190mm F/7.7 Dobsonian was made by Beches Gavril , a very talented mirror maker of Timisoara , too early passed away.
The main mirrors of other telescopes were made by Attila together with the mountings.
Do not forget , hanging from the neck is a 20x60mm Russian monocular used to find the star asterisms housing the so-much loved DSO objects and hidden by the urban sky.


Mircea