Their story, in their words…
Our project, with the help of the Mark Evison foundation, was to build a Dobsonian telescope and despite the challenges we faced, we were able to complete this project!
Our first hurdle arose before we were even able to start the build, with the primary mirror we set out to buy being out of stock. With no reasonably priced alternatives, this caused severe delays to the most technical half of our project. However, despite this, we decided to push on and begin creating the telescope mount- which held its own set of challenges. After weeks of searching, Ayman was able to find another mirror and begin on the mirror cell. He faced problems with mounting both the primary and secondary mirror with normal gorilla glue, which failed under the heat of late summer, so he tested and decided to use contact cement which has proved to be a successful choice with no further complications surrounding this.
During the construction of the mount, Isabel had to use creative solutions to tackle problems related to our limited equipment and used items such as clothes pegs and paint buckets to clamp materials together. Other problems were seen during construction, including the large amount of friction around the bearing. Upon further research, it was seen that others had used kitchen laminate and Teflon pads to reduce this effect and since we didn’t have access to these materials, Isabel decided to use felt pads, instead of teflon, to raise the bearing, reducing the friction and allowing for the less-than-perfect semicircle made only with a hand saw and file.
Both of us would like to thank the Mark Evison foundation for this opportunity that has given us the chance to problem solve, work as a team and become more resilient as people. This has been an amazing, challenging experience that we would have not been able to have otherwise.
