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When observing with my telescope I sometimes use a star chart and/or observing list to help me find things to look at. Having a dim light that illuminates your chart or list is helpful of course, but a red light is even better because red light has less effect on your night vision. I have a wearable headlight with a red LED which works well for this and is also useful for finding and identifying eyepieces, tools, etc. in the eyepiece case , or on the ground. I have also used a desk lamp with a red LED on my small table and a small strip of red LEDs glued to the inside of my eyepiece case. Both are powered small 5 volt battery packs .
The SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE has plans and instructions for making hand held 1:48 scale models of the Hubble Telescope out of paper and cardboard, or PVC pipe and cardboard on their activities page. Print their patterns on cover-weight paper or card stock for the paper model or regular paper for the PVC model.
https://hubblesite.org/resource-gallery/activities
So I decided to make one that would be emiting light instead of collecting light.
On mine I used two inch and three inch PVC pipes, and a 3 inch to 2 inch bushing for the optical tube, and a 3/16 inch wooden dowel for the solar panels. I 3d printed the solar panels, the aperture door and mount, and the rear cover or "aft bulkhead". I wrapped silver foil tape around the two inch tube to simulate the Hubble's insulation jacket, and sprayed the three inch section, the aft bulkhead, and the aperture door with silver paint.
For lighting I added red and white LED strip lights. The white LED's are if I want to use it as a desk or reading lamp. It has a 50mm concave mirror on the inside of the rear bulkhead to help direct the photons (or are they waves). The LED strips are not dimmable but the aperture door can be closed if needed. The strips are powered by a 12vdc battery pack.
To mount this thing I dissected a thrift store desk lamp and removed the lamp part from the flexible stalk and replaced it with the Hubble model. The original base was not wide enough to hold the unit upright so I made a larger base out some scrap plywood.
Solar panels modeled on Tinkercad. The black solar cells are only two layers high. I copied them and changed them to a hole, then aligned (centered) them with the panel then grouped (combined) them. This resulted with the solar panel facing down with indentations on the bottom for the solar cells. Print the solar panels as two separate prints but one on top of the other. Print the solar cells first, remove the purge strip and brim or skirt if any, change the filament then print the panel. When its printing the panel the printer doesn't know that the solar cells are already there so you need to tell the print head to move up when gets to a blank space or a hole. In Cura this is called Z HOP. Other slicing programs may have a different name for it but they all should have it. If your solar cells are 0.4 mm then you should set the Z HOP on your second print (the solar panel) at 0.4 or 0.5 mm.
I did not make the high gain antenna. When used as intended it will be stored, transported, and set up mostly in the dark so the easiest way to not break the fragile antenna is to not include them.
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