Customer Reviews

How to Make a Telescope ( Second English Edition)

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My first experience with Texereau's book was back in the early 1960's when I built my first 4" Newtownian. Since then, I've build about 20 scopes, including several catadioptric designs and competed several times at Stellafane. At present, I'm building my 14 year old son an 8" f/d=5.2 Newtownian and find myself once again refering to Texereau's book.

To date, I have not seen an equal to Texereau's book, particularly in his detailed description of Foucault testing.

Dr. Brian T. Davis

Originally published in French in 1951, translated and published in English in 1957, it was re-published by Willmann-Bell in 1984, with extensive appendices giving sources of even more information. This book certainly shows its age in its inclusion of topics such as silvering a mirror at home (don't do it - lots of nasty chemicals), and its omission of Dobsonian ideas in its section on alt-az mounts - it pre-dates that innovation. However, for a discussion of designing an optical system, to grinding and polishing a mirror, and especially for details of how to rigorously test its figure, Texereau is unparalleled.

Several other books include six or a dozen telescopes you can build, with some pictures of the final product, and the builder's musings on what problems he faced in building it; Texereau takes you through all the messy details you need to know before making a lot of time-consuming mistakes. Again, much of it can be skipped; he spends four chapters on classical Cassegrains, which I gather is his favorite telescope design. But this book is highly recommended for anyone considering pushing glass.

This book , is the bible for an amateur telescope maker. Jean Texereau even includes programs for a PC for mirror test data reduction.It is not a theory book , but a book that takes you step by step all along the way.

This book, is basically the Telescope maker's bible. Its not fancy by any means. But it is straight to the point, and gives excellent information on how to make a telescope MIRROR as well as some direction on making the telescope itself. But for those of us who like to make our own mirror's this is the book for you. Its a plain janer, but it packs a good punch..

I'm sorry, this is my first review. How could amazon fail to give a good synopsys of this book? Anything by texereau is pretty much a definitive work on telescope making and mirror making. He gives good explanations, gives the math behind stuff. He also gives the best explanations of how to polish and parabolize a mirror that i have seen. Before you buy Ingalls book buy this one.

This is a translation (alas, there is no new edition in France). At least 2 generations of amateur have used it in France, and, even if some aspects look a bit old, it is always the most serious and the most rigourous. Read it first , before any other book !

This is, without doubt, the best book that I have read about telescope making. It is clearly written, full of detail, with good instructions on all points of mirror making and also describes how to make a simple mounting for an 8" reflector. If you have this book, together with Howard's "Handbook for telescope making" and the chapter on mirror making in "Amateur telescope making Vol 2", you will have all the information that you need to make an excellent telescope. I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

All I have to say is that this is a great book. I have built telescopes before and had some decent sucess but this book is the tops and now Iam working on my 5th telescope and it looks good

This is the book that scared me away from buying it for years because of the heavy math. The first version I saw was in 1966 and it was a lot thinner than what is available now. I finally picked it up at a used bookstore in 2002. By that time I was not longer making mirrors. I just wanted it for my library.

This book goes into excruciating detail on mirror testing and despite the complexity, I gleaned a few things from it that I wish I'd known twenty years ago when I made my last mirror!

It has a lot of extra material that I'm sure wasn't in the much thinner original version I saw in the 60's. Whoever updated it did an excellent job though even now, as another reviewer noted, much of the info is outdated.

This is another essential book that every mirror maker should have in his or her library. If you are just starting out, get it, but I'd recommend the books by Howard and Thompson over this one unless you are a math wiz. Still, highly recommended.

I have read many books on how to build telescopes and this is by far the best book to own! I thought that the "the dobsonian telescope by David Kriege" was an excellent book until I read this book by jean texereau. The two don't even compare. This book is the bible of telescope building! It is very informative with lots of good pictures. With this book you can build almost any type of reflector telescope you like. The average person may get scared off by some of the formulas within the text. But most of the formulas are there just to double check your work. Great book!