Telescope Building with John Dobson
this is like a full hour of hand grinding a telescope mirror. if you're a medium to huge nerd you'll like it

gregarious canid. avatar by ISANANIKA.
this is like a full hour of hand grinding a telescope mirror. if you're a medium to huge nerd you'll like it
while I'm looking through my 'show people youtube things' list, have you seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFSU9X11wyY
i have too much youtube oral history and do not want to pollute feeds TOO much, but #nire-random-youtube and #nire-random-youtubes (when I am high I forget which one it is so it's an even split) are where they end up living
Pulling that quote made me immediately put the video on, so thank you. <3
This is a really interesting property of spherical optics! I spent a semester in college working in an optics fab shop, and the key to getting a nice, symmetrical lens shape was just to rotate the part all the time.
Our supervisor was this old Russian guy who defected out of the USSR, had been making optics basically how whole adult life, and even he had a hard time explaining how to fix a non-spherical part. So much of making lenses is just following the vibes
My favorite part is when he reveals what he's using for the bearing 48 minutes in