Home-made telescope

Richest Field telescope

RFT telescope

RFT telescope

I made the six-inch Newtonian reflector to use the carbon-dioxide cooled cameras, but outfitted it with a long-focal length eyepiece so it could also function as a Richest Field Telescope (RFT).  I ground and polished the 6-inch mirror to have a focal ratio of f/4.0.  This high focal ratio mirror, when combined with a long focal legth eyepiece, produces a bright image of extended objects in a wide field of view at low magnification.  At these low magnifications, the telescope can operate without a finder scope and without being mounted on a tripod, although it can be attached to other telescopes to share their mountings.