Manufacturer of long focus achromatic or ED refractor telescopes.
Being a long time amateur astronomer I have some 35 years of practical experience in visual and photographic observing.
During this time a great many telescopes of different types and quality have passed through my hands so I have formed myself an opinion on which type of telescope I prefer for the different kinds of subjects : sun, moon, planets, deep-sky observing of galaxies, globulars, open starclusters, nebulae small and large....
The answer is : refractors, refractors, refractors, refractors, ....
As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing more pleasing than the views through a refractor with its contrasty images and pinpoint stars, combined with its simplicity in use and its elegance.
I have been using apo's, semi-apo's and achromats of the small and large kind as well as of the short and long kind. Each one has its use but for moon and planetary observing I have come to really appreciate the views through long focal length achromatic refractors, because they seem to give stable views more often i.e. that they seem to be less affected by turbulences in the air. They do show the unavoidable CA but at F12 or F15 that is - in my opinion - not so bad.
At first it wasn't very clear to me why those views were so good, over the last 2 years there have been quite some debates on this subject for instance on the "Cloudy nights" forum where some very interesting points were made by Neil English (also author of the book "Choosing and using a refracting telescope"). There thus seem to be some possible explanations for their overall better image stabillity as percieved by some people, myself included.
Anyway, this to say that I was in the market for a long focal length achromatic telescope of 125 - 150 mm aperture. Only : that market was very sparse with telescopes either very expensive or with low availability or not to my liking so that in the end I decided to make my own telescope in the way that I wanted it.
While doing this I soon realised that in order to produce a decent telescope I needed some pieces to be custom made and powder-coated which made it quite expensive. It was obvious that those pieces would be much cheaper if made in larger quantities. Also, the hard part is first designing the telescope and all of it's pieces and then figuring out how to make them and from which material and then finally assemble them. If you can make one telescope it is fairly easy to make another and many more, so why not share it with other people?
Thus was born the idea of starting my own little company in order to produce and sell the telescopes that I love myself, at a price that I can afford myself. FrTelescopes is the result.
Frank Theys
