TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Stargazer's Tinkering Skills Turn The Far Into The Near

ADVERTISEMENT

By CHERYL BENTLEY, The Suncoast News

Published: November 19, 2007

Jack Brockhurst remembers looking for shooting stars with his cousins in a rural area of New York as a child and feeling the magic of the heavens.

These days, the pull of the skies is every bit as intense for the adult Brockhurst as it was for the child.

The adult Brockhurst has one up over the child, though. He has created his own 500-pound reflecting telescope to view the heavens.
Brockhurst and his telescope can found about once a month at Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park in New Port Richey. Other fans of the heavens bring their telescopes and gather to look at the sky at the 8,069-acre nature preserve north of the Seven Springs-Trinity area.

At the most recent event, more than 200 people showed up to look through about 10 telescopes that amateur astronomers brought to the remote county park.

The park is a haven from the light pollution from houses, streetlights and other manmade sources that can interfere with stargazing.

The sky-watchers do not have a regular meeting time because meetings are dependent on the schedule of the park superintendent, who must stay late to keep the park open during the sky-watching session.

Brockhurst's telescope is so heavy he must use a portable crane to get it on his truck to make the trip to the park from his New Port Richey home.

"I think in a past life, I came from Texas because I do everything big. Big telescope and big binoculars. I want to see more," Brockhurst says.

Those binoculars are astronomical ones designed to view the heavens, and they tip the scale at 17 pounds.

As for the 500-pounder, it is not the New York native's first telescope.

It is his 10th.

"I wanted to see more, so I built bigger and bigger telescopes," he says.

His first one, a refracting telescope, began in New York in 1977 when a friend, Mike Dlugoz, approached him to help make five basic parts of a telescope from aluminum castings Dlugoz supplied.

The basic parts included a refractor's standard long optical tube and the mount, which allowed the optical tube to swivel. Other parts were the saddle holding the optical tube, and the ring assembly fastening it to the saddle.
Brockhurst also made a holder inside the tube for the glass that would bend the light to carry images of the heavens to the eyes.

Each of the five basic parts was made up of smaller ones.
Brockhurst was a journeyman machinist who was trained through the traditional apprentice system. He had served both as a machinist in various companies and as a machine instructor in upstate New York.

Making the parts was not difficult, Brockhurst says, although they required lathe, milling machine and drill press, all tools needing training to operate.

"Any machinist can make the basic parts," he says.

Reviving A Childhood Fascination
Brockhurst finished making them in two days.

Dlugoz gave him a set of parts for his work.

After that, Brockhurst bought inexpensive optical equipment: eyepiece, glass, focuser and a spotting scope, to bring the desired object into view.

He estimates he spent about $200 on that first telescope.

Not only did he enjoy making it, but he revived his childhood fascination with the heavens.
Brockhurst was hooked.

He remembers the first time he saw the rings of Saturn through the telescope. He had to share the beauty and awe he felt.

His wife, Camille, was taking a shower at the time. He insisted Camille get out of the shower, put on her robe and go outside to their driveway to look at Saturn and its rings.

Camille evidently did not share her husband's fascination.

"Big deal," she replied.

"She burst my bubble," Brockhurst laughs.

As a refractor, his first telescope used a lens to refract, or bend, light traveling straight through the tube to form an image at the eyepiece. Binoculars and telephoto lenses employ the same principle.

When Brockhurst started making larger instruments, he graduated to reflecting telescopes. Those scopes use mirrors - usually a larger primary mirror and a smaller secondary mirror - to reflect light, rather than bend it.

Large telescopes, such as those in observatories, are reflecting scopes.

That first telescope took him about two weeks to make, with the addition of optical equipment.

'A Handyman Inventor'

His latest 500-pounder took him about two years to complete. It was a monument to his son, Jonathan, who died in a car accident.

The telescope carries a simple plaque: "In memory of our son Jon."
Brockhurst also makes miniature model telescopes.

"I like building them as much as I like looking into the stars," he says about telescopes in general.

Building the 'scopes appears to be the perfect pastime for the man who calls himself "a handyman inventor."

"I was always the kind of fellow if I looked at something and if it cost too much money, I'd build it."

When he found cabin cruisers were too expensive, Brockhurst and his dad built a 40-foot one themselves.

Additionally, he holds two patents on boating equipment.

These days, though, the heavens seem to have captured his heart. The 64-year-old carries the enthusiasm of a child when he describes looking at the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.

They bring the vastness of creation to earth.

"The layman can't fathom the distance from our galaxy to the next," he says. "It's done in light years because it's so far we don't have enough zeroes to calculate it."

Life on Earth feels small when up against the immensity of space.

"It makes you feel very insignificant," Brockhurst says. "We're very small compared to what's around us."

The next astronomical gathering at Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park, 10500 Wilderness Park Road, is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 15.

Call (727) 834-3247 to verify the date.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT