Astronomy

This innovative company isn’t just about optics — the key is its people. text and images by Tony Hallas

PlaneWave

laneWave Instruments, a

company that builds and

sells large, high-quality

telescopes, officially

launched in 2006, but its

history is much older.

Years earlier, while working for

Celestron, Joe Haberman and Rick

Hedrick had wanted to build a large tele-

scope. Another employee, David Rowe,

had an idea for a design he called a cor-

rected Dall-Kirkham (CDK). It addressed

the strong off-axis aberrations of the stan-

dard Dall-Kirkham design by introducing

two corrective lenses into the optical path.

Doing so yielded a large, perfectly cor-

rected f lat field ideal for imaging.

Haberman, Hedrick, Rowe, and a

fourth teammate, Jason Fournier, enrolled

in an optics-making course at El Camino

College in Torrance, California. They

then built by hand the first CDK telescope

— one with a massive aperture of 42

inches! Once they had proved the con-

cept, the next step was to see if Celestron

could produce CDK telescopes.

The first one the team built was an

18-inch model, followed shortly thereafter

by a 20-inch. However, building 20-inch

CDK telescopes at Celestron proved

impractical. So Hedrick, a partial owner,

sold his share of Celestron to David Chen

before forming PlaneWave Instruments.

Even today, Celestron and PlaneWave

remain on very good terms, openly shar-

ing technology and ideas.

Aiming for perfection

From the beginning, Hedrick’s goal was

for PlaneWave to make the perfect tele-

scope. Anyone who has tried astrophotog-

raphy can tell you that there are myriad

things that can go wrong. So, to make his

instruments “perfect,” he concentrated on

five important subjects:

1) Stable optics. Today, PlaneWave

offers mirrors made from quartz, a mate-

rial that is much more thermally stable

than the Pyrex mirrors many manufac-

turers use.

2) Large corrected field. The CDK

design allows for a 70-millimeter cor-

rected field — enough to easily cover the

detectors in large cameras.

3) Accurate mounts. PlaneWave

mounts use encoders to create tracking

with virtually zero periodic error. Also,

the company’s sophisticated Point XP

software models the mount in combina-

tion with the telescope and sky.

4) Easy focus. PlaneWave has devel-

oped software for its focusers that tests

the focus of numerous stars in the field of

view and automatically brings the tele-

scope into perfect focus.

5) Fast slewing. Direct-drive motors

(with no gears) on some mounts can slew

very quickly. Users can also program

PlaneWave mounts to follow just about

anything in the sky, like satellites or com-

ets. Additionally, Hedrick made certain

these mounts have none of the flexure

problems of weaker mounts.

The vision

The company’s focus has remained

on Hedrick’s vision — to create high-

end telescopes optimized for astropho-

tography. PlaneWave offers a specific

product line with stable pricing available

to amateurs, educational institutions,

and the scientific community. Even the

company’s enormous 1-meter scope

has a set price. There are no surprises

The story of

P

PlaneWave uses a high-precision direct-drive

motor in many of its mounts.

A prototype of the company’s new L Mount,

which can support up to a 24-inch telescope.