All Done With Mirrors
I've written about a distinctive optical design in magazine articles and at this website at the link A New Telescope. But now you can read more about this telescope design in my latest book, All Done With Mirrors. Just recently released!
Here's a summary from the book's back cover:
If you had the chance to observe the heavens in comfort, would you take a seat and enjoy the view? This little book acquaints sky observers with an uncommon but comfortable optical design, the Mersenne telescope. The unusual Mersenne optics can link the lens telescope to a far larger mirror telescope. This linkage boosts the power of the refractor to match the aperture of the large reflector! Sounds far-fetched, but it’s true and it works.
Against the backdrop of crafting his first telescope mirror, Roy Kaelin describes this exceptional two-mirror design, dormant for decades until others revived it, whose optics the amateur telescope maker can craft himself.
The Mersenne design lets the serious amateur enhance an existing telescope and make it easily accessible to small children and the wheelchair-bound. It’s a superb way for all to gain an unmatched view of the night sky magnified, while comfortably seated!
Against the backdrop of crafting his first telescope mirror, Roy Kaelin describes this exceptional two-mirror design, dormant for decades until others revived it, whose optics the amateur telescope maker can craft himself.
The Mersenne design lets the serious amateur enhance an existing telescope and make it easily accessible to small children and the wheelchair-bound. It’s a superb way for all to gain an unmatched view of the night sky magnified, while comfortably seated!
Published by E-Booktime, LLC.
Find out how you can improve your view of the night sky! Order your own book from the publisher at this link.
Or, you can order your paperback copy today from Amazon.com.
Or, you can order your paperback copy today from Amazon.com.
The Star Machine and Other Tales
If you want to send your imagination on a flight of fancy with an easy, unassuming brand of science fiction and with a dash of historical romance thrown in for good measure, then get set to launch it with my book, The Star Machine and Other Tales.
Here's a summary from the book's dust jacket:
The O'Ryans are an odd, restless lot. Generations of this enterprising Irish family find opportunity in America as an itinerant blacksmith, a resourceful tradesman, a college professor, an eccentric industrialist. The family's lifelong pursuits seem peculiar; likewise, the upshot of their ventures often alarms many. But, it is the latter O'Ryan's founding of a band of ingenious scientists, technicians and engineers, the Travelers, who cause the greatest unrest. Advancing 21st-century industry with fabulous and fearsome machines, the Travelers launch an entrepreneurial blitz on behalf of humanity but malicious rivals frustrate their efforts at nearly every turn.
One in the band turns traitor and the O'Ryans must hide, unable to quell a rising tide of tyranny seeking the Travelers' marvelous inventions for evil's own advance. To thwart his foes, Ian Kilroy, a faithful though furtive friend of the O'Ryans, must discover what links a rash of devastating earthquakes, the startling destruction of a pilot fusion reactor, and the secret sabotage of the Travelers' own trial starship. Time isn't on his side. A starry amulet, more accursed than lucky as the O'Ryans' family heirloom, seems the unlikely prize Kilroy's enemies madly seek to keep the mystery unsolved and seize the Travelers' legacy.
One in the band turns traitor and the O'Ryans must hide, unable to quell a rising tide of tyranny seeking the Travelers' marvelous inventions for evil's own advance. To thwart his foes, Ian Kilroy, a faithful though furtive friend of the O'Ryans, must discover what links a rash of devastating earthquakes, the startling destruction of a pilot fusion reactor, and the secret sabotage of the Travelers' own trial starship. Time isn't on his side. A starry amulet, more accursed than lucky as the O'Ryans' family heirloom, seems the unlikely prize Kilroy's enemies madly seek to keep the mystery unsolved and seize the Travelers' legacy.
Published by Xlibris, a subsidiary of Random House, Inc. and a partner in Random House Ventures, LLC.
Order your hardcover edition or paperback copy today from Amazon.com.
Look for this book's sequel The Last Star in the Night Sky at an online book source near you.
The sequel offers an engaging sweep at the O’Ryans rise to prominence, details the heroic work of the globe-trotting group of entrepreneurs known as the Travelers, exposes a darker side of the chaos their inventions can cause, picks up the mystery of an accursed crystal amulet in the story first told in The Star Machine and Other Tales and then rushes headlong toward its frenzied finale in an uncertain world, poised to step either toward the brink of destruction or onto the threshold of renaissance.
The sequel will likely be ready for release in early 2012.
By the way, if you're interested in a well received, finely detailed coffee-table book on antique astronomical artifacts, click at the link to examine The Universe Unveiled by Bruce Stephenson et al, also at Amazon.com. I provided the pen-and-ink illustrations in its Astronomical Appendix.