If about 170 hours suffice to make a six-inch refractor that is serviceable and satisfactory, what accounts for the 17,000 hours of spare-time work that Robert Louis Waland, a Dumfries aircraft factory employee, gave to this telescope over period of 11 years? Extras? The answer is yes-two attached star cameras, a drive, that was an immense job in itself and synchronome clock. But mainly it was high standards of design and exquisite workmanship throughout.

Waland began, as is recommended, by making a reflector. On the refractor shown here, which was his next, he was helped by Ellison and Dr. E. A. Baker of the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh and Amateur Telescope Making-Advanced. The lower part of Waland's telescope pedestal is made of aluminum cast in two parts. The upper part is of steel tubing. These parts and the mounting are blue-gray. The tube and cameras are cream. The upper camera has an f4.5, five-inch photographic doublet lens. The lower one is a 5 1/2 inch Schmidt.

On the right is a two-inch star finder and on the left a little 6x telescope for viewing the illuminated declination circle without leaving the eyepiece; Waland claims he is "lazy"! The eyepiece end has a penta-prism star diagonal and guiding head, hence does not revert the image. Why aren't there more of these?

The synchronome clock shown in the illustration controls an induction motor that runs the drive on the pedestal and this, the job Waland says he is most proud of, cannot here be described for lack of space. He barely mentioned the clock, a type accurate to one second a week. And was asked why. His reply: "It's just an ordinary synchronome I made." He also omitted to mention the optics and was queried: "Where did you buy them?" Reply: "What! And deprive myself of all that pleasure? All optics home-brewed including 11 eyepieces." Perhaps these two full-sized jobs looked minor against a 17,000 hour total.

By accident Dr. Erwin Finlay Freundich, before Nazi days founder and director of the Einstein Institute ("Einstein Tower") and now at the University of St. Andrews, learned of Waland's telescope. The outcome: Waland is now instrument maker at St. Andrews and is building the university a 30-36-inch Schmidt-Cassegrainian telescope.

Wartime restrictions kept Waland from building an observatory from new materials. But now he has found some second-hand steel and can at last have a private Observatory at his new home "Orlington," which is in Priestden Place, St. Andrews Fife, Scotland.

The remaining description is primarily for telescope makers who wish to study closely the details of this advanced telescope. Waland writes:

The axes are made from three-inch heavy seamless steel tubing. The design is such that the 1 1/2-inch inner shafts carry no weight, except in the case of the counterweight. The 'bottleneck' is made from steel 3 1/2 inches in diameter.

The lower end of the polar axis has a wheel for quick motion in right ascension and an hour circle for direct setting. This circle is free to rotate on the polar axis and is set by the hand knob at the top. The time shown by the indicator on the axis housing corresponds to the sidereal time at the moment. The telescope is then rotated on the polar axis until the lower indicator, which rotates it (being attached to the inner shaft), shows the right ascension of the object. "The worm-wheel drive is totally enclosed and runs in an oil bath. The second worm-wheel reduction connects to the clock by a driving shaft with universal joint at both ends. The worm wheel is not attached directly to the polar axis but is free to rotate on the latter.

"The polar axis is driven by the worm wheel by way of the right ascension clamp, which can be operated from the eyepiece end of the telescope in any position of observation. The gearing seen between the telescope tube and the declination circle transmits the power. The clamp takes the form of a V-shaped pulley attached to the worm wheel and surrounded completely by a V-ring (like a V-belt on a pulley). The ring is clamped by a screw. This screw is operated by two universal joints and a sliding, keyed shaft. This compensates for the slight lack of alignment and varying distance, which results from the operation of the right ascension slow motion tangential lever. This lever is L-shaped and pivoted where the legs meet and is also operated by a second set of gears beyond the declination circle. The movement is transmitted through the rod which can be seen running parallel to the declination axis. The end of this lever is seen above the worm housing. This screw motion applied by hand is opposed by a powerful spring operating on the other arm of the lever. This cuts out backlash and its evil effects. The same lever is attached to a V-shaped casting seen below which transmits the motion to the declination axis by way of the pivot point of the lever, using the clamp also as a pivot. This imparts a rotation to the polar axis and is quite independent of the clock drive."

THROUGHOUT much of the literature of telescope mirror-making the terms parabola and paraboloid are used interchangeably as if the two were synonymous. Of course nearly everybody understands what is meant, a paraboloid being the two-dimensional surface generated when the one dimensional curve called a parabola is rotated about its axis. The escape from the alleged crime is that when a mirror is called a parabola its cross section is described.

What more rightfully rubs the mathematician's whiskers backward is calling paraboloid a curve. Being two-dimensional, it is a surface. In sum, then: Parabola: one-dimensional, curve. Paraboloid: two-dimensional, surface.

WALKDEN of London mentions a wrinkle for observing with his richest-field telescope. In an ordinary straight view where the telescope tube is fixed, as on a mounting, the central 20 degrees of the field may be good and the margins good, until you swivel your eye to get a direct look at them with the central part of the retina. Then they seem strangely dim and also have poor definition.

What you have done, Walkden points out, is to move the crystalline lens of the eye sidewise from the Ramsden circle so only a crescent of the lens and the telescope mirror remain in use. This is because the Ramsden circle is so close to the size of the eye lens; you planned it that way when you designed the telescope.

The wrinkle is simply to compensate this partial eclipse by moving the whole head in the opposite direction an amount which will come to about a seventh of an

inch. If the telescope is not on a mounting it can itself be moved a little. The chances are that the average observer does these things unconsciously, but it is instructive to realize what he is doing and why.

COULD a large flat be made by attaching several small flats to a rigid backing and adjusting them to a single plane? Readers who have asked this question will find interest in a report by Professor Arthur Howe Carpenter of La Grange, III.

"I made it work," he says. "When I corrected the secondary for my 20 1/2-inch Cassegrainian telescope I needed a flat of the same diameter for use in figuring the secondary. Having three 10-inch flats on hand I silvered them and set them up- the three arranged in triangular fashion- on a heavy, solid backing made of two-by-fours bolted together. Each flat was given its own trio of push-pull adjusting screws. By adjusting first two and then all three flats I brought the star images into coincidence. This was a tedious job. I was helped by a very small defect in the pin" hole and later when the secondary was figured I could see that same defect very perfectly with a good eyepiece. It looked exactly as it had by direct inspection with a pocket magnifier.

"Next the convex secondary was mounted in place and tested and corrected in the usual manner.

"Actually the three flats probably did not lie in precisely the same plane, but they did lie in parallel planes, which was as good."

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