Australian Sky & Telescope - 04.2019

72 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE April 2019

ASTRONOMER’S WORKBENCH by Jerry Oltion

Brent’s light bucket

You can make a telescope out of practically anything.

I’M A BIG PROPONENT of what I call

‘found object engineering’. There’s

a special kind of delight in creating

something with stuff that’s been

cluttering up your shed for years, or

in going to the hardware store and

wandering the aisles in search of the

perfect gadget that can be repurposed

for your project.

Brent Burton has taken that concept

to a perhaps ridiculous extreme, building

a scope out of a 20-litre bucket, two

4-litre buckets, two soft drink cups, some

plumbing fixtures and bungee cords.

We last saw Brent’s handiwork in

ourJuly2017issue,whenIwroteabout

thebeautifulwood-inlaidtelescopeand

hand-carved accessory tray he built. His

newprojectoccupiestheoppositeendof

the refinement spectrum.

WhydidBrentbuildsuchacrazy

telescope?“Iwasalwaysintriguedby

small,portablescopes.Likemostpeople,

however,Ididn’thavethemoneytogo

out and custom machine individual

partstobuildmyown,soIdecidedto

improvise and build one using cheap

buildingmaterialsthatIcouldsource

from the local hardware store.”

Fortheoptics,hecannibaliseda

secondhand 114-mm Orion StarBlast

tabletop scope. He kept the primary,

secondary and spider assembly from

theStarBlastandmadeeverythingelse

himself.

TheOTAistwo4-litrebucketswith

theiropenendsheldtogetherwith

bungee cords. Brent cut the bottom

outofonetomakethefrontopening

andmountedtheprimarymirror

cellinthebottomoftheother.The

mirrorcellisjustacircleofmedium-

density fibreboard held together with

BRENT BURTON (4)

thumbscrews and small springs for

collimation. The helical focuser is made

from a toilet valve.

The altitude bearings really make

this scope. They’re just plastic cups with

plastic reinforcing disks on the outer

ends. The threaded rod that attaches

them to the OTA goes through the

plastic disks, the bottom of the cups,

and the lid on the top that came with

the cups. Brent says he did have to be

careful with the tension on the bungees

that go over the cups and provide friction

in the altitude direction, but he was able

to find a sweet spot that gave him the

properstiffnessofmotionanddidn’t

crush the cups.

The lid of the big bucket becomes

thegroundboard,withhex-boltheads

againstthebottomofthe‘rocker

bucket’providingtherightamountof

friction in azimuth. Brent had to cut a

flap in the side of the outer bucket for

therearoftheOTAtoclearwhenaimed

atthehorizon.Hehingedtheflapso

nothing would fall out during transport.

Brentsaysthescopetookhimabout

amonthtobuild:“Anhourafterwork

andafewhoursontheweekendhere

and there.”

Howwelldoesitwork?“Surprisingly,

not too bad. Although it works as

alarger-footprinttabletopscope,I

actuallyenjoyedtakingtheOTAby

itselfandusingitasaskysweeperwhile

sitting in a chair.” The scope doesn’t

needafinder,sinceit’ssuchawide-field

scope on its own.

For more information, contact Brent

[email protected].

■Contributing EditorJERRY OLTION

sometimes uses buckets as secondary

cages, too.

Brent Burton holds what might be the

world’s most portable ‘light bucket’.

XLeft: Everything nestles inside the outer

bucket. Right: The scope parts laid out for

assembly show how simple a telescope can be.