Amateur Astronomer Bruce Berger Talks About Meteors and Telescopes (Video)

Bruce Berger is an IT guy, but he's also an amateur astronomer who takes at least one aspect of astronomy more seriously than most sky-watchers. Not content with what he could buy when he first wanted a telescope of his own, Berger set out to make one -- it turned out so well, he says he'll never part with it, and he's made several others since, and taught many other people to do the same. In this pursuit, he's also been a long-time member of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, including a stint as the group's president. (Berger's custom license plate reads "SCPMKR.") In the video below, though, I caught up with him in Maine between evenings watching this year's spectacular Perseid showers (and without any of his home-built scopes to hand), to give some insight about what would-be skywatchers should consider in looking at scopes. It's surprising just how good today's telescopes are for the money, but it's easy to be ripped off, too, or at least disappointed. (And besides avoiding department store junk, building your own is still Bruce's strongest advice.) Ed note: This Video is Part 1 of 2. Part 2 will run tomorrow.

Comments

Telescope size

[wbr1]

For those that are interested here is a little more info. As you may know, the larger the diameter of the telescope, the more light gathering power it has. Similar to a bucket catching rain, the wider the bucket the more it catches.

Refractors have two main disadvantages, one, the larger the aperture, the thicker the lens has to be as well, making the lense heavy. IIRC it also requires longer and longer tubes to focus the light.

A reflector mirror on the other hand can be much shorter for the aperture size and the mirror can be lighter than a similarly sized lens, as it only needs to be a reflective film or coating on a lighter substrate, as long as it has minimal imperfections.

Really good and large mirrors are expensive though. Here is a place that will sell you good mirrors if you want to make your own. http://zambutomirrors.com/mirrors.html