Its not every day we get to follow the build of a 40″ telescope from start to end. Here we are at the very beginnings of what will become a quite magnificent metre class telescope for Mike K of Victoria.

The blank is currently sat upside-down on Mike Lockwood’s grinding machine and about to have it’s back ground perfectly flat before the long job of grinding and polishing the front surface to perfection.

Mike’s telescope will be an incredible f3.0 so it will certainly be a challenge for everyone involved to bring this beauty to life both optically and mechanically. Thankfully for him, there are craftsmen on two continents capable of the job, stripped and ready for action!

Watch this space for updates…

Amy and David Heard, proud owners of SDM052 are part of a super-exclusive group of Northern Hemisphere SDM owners.

Being Texans they understand that big is best and here they are in their supersized roll-off roof observatory with their appropriately large 25″ SDM.

Unfortunately for the Heard’s, equally big winter weather has been keeping that roof shut with many inches of snow falling recently to spoil the fun. Soon enough those legendary Texan skies will come out to play and we are looking forward to a fantastic observing report come the spring!

When Peter dropped off SDM053 to its proud owner Alex Mihailidis, he was surprised to have a close encounter with Canis Major (can?s to be exact, for there are two)! The scope was mistakenly unloaded beside the roll-off roof observatory, which turned out to be a kennel, as his four legged friends eyed up their new chew-toy.

Thankfully their Big Dob is built to withstand the rigours of the harsh Australian climate with many stainless steel parts and finest marine ply construction. This beautiful scope sports a very fine 14″ mirror too, figured to perfection by Mark Suchting and is sure to give outstanding views of the skies.

The first challenge will be to resolve that difficult double, Sirius, the Dog Star…

A monster dob is a joy to view through at a star party, but spare a thought for the generous owner who had to transport it there.

When you have got one of the largest, sometimes you need a little more help to move that beast in to position. So SDM’s biggest ever creation, SDM022 has been back for a re-tread!

The new transport system makes it wheely easy to move about and the owner can now enjoy stunning views of the night sky without tyreing…

In the right hands, a beautifully constructed Dobsonian turns in to a fabulous astrograph.

And those right hands belong to Alex Cherney  and his fabulous telescope Nyx (SDM035).

Armed with a spectrum-modified Sony NEX-5 camera and great sky during the South Pacific Star Party trip earlier in April, Alex took this top image of M20, the Trifid nebula.

The image has been created from 27 x 15sec images taken at ISO 3200. It is testimony to the ‘scopes precision engineering and the superb tracking of ServoCat that this is even possible, but never underestimate the skill needed by the photographer to bag a shot like this.

Great shot Alex!