Building and Using Binoscopes

Norman P. Butler is an award winning telescope creator and published writer of telescope-building articles, some of which have appeared in popular astronomy magazines and books. A graduate of San Diego City College, Norman holds a Master s degree in Physics and Astronomy. After serving in the Navy for many years as an Opticalman, he worked for AVCO Everett Research Laboratory at Haleakala Observatory, Maui, building electro-optical equipment for use on a 1.6M and dual 1.2M telescopes. While there he also performed core measurement studies on the supermassive galaxy M-87, as well as additional galactic studies and stellar scintillation measurements. Later on Butler went on to teach at the university level in Shenzhen, China, and he retired in 2011 to the island of Saipan in the Northern Marianas. Butler has received the Engineering Merit Award and Warren Estes Memorial Award, both for homemade binoscopes that he designed and built.

Preface.- Why Binoscopes?- Optical Designs.- Binoculars Are Binoscopes.- RTMC Riverside Telescope Makers Conference.- Homemade Binoscopes.- One-Of-A-Kind.- Odds and Ends.- Equatorial Drive Platforms.- Equatorial vs. Altazimuth.- Binoculars Of-The-Third-Kind.- Astronomical Formulae.- Glossary.- Index.

"The book is a valuable addition to Springer's Practical Astronomy series authorized by the late Sir Patrick Moore, and makes a genuine contribution to the 'how-to' literature of amateur astronomy. In its ten chapters, Binoscopes rambles cheerfully through the whys and wherefores of binocular telescopes ... . I would certainly recommend this book to any amateur astronomer keen to explore the possibilities offered by doubling up their telescopes, and I hope it does well." (Fred Watson, The Observatory, Vol. 136 (1253), August, 2016)