The One-Meter Dobsonian Telescope
A 1000 mm custom Dobsonian telescope: one metre of aperture, 195 kilograms of structure, engineered and built entirely by hand in Italy.
The One-Meter Dobsonian Telescope
The furthest we've ever taken a custom build
The 1-Meter Dobsonian Telescope is the most extreme instrument DocTelescope has ever built — a 1000 mm (1 metre) f/3.3 custom Dobsonian, designed from a blank sheet and assembled entirely by hand in Italy.
It’s the proof of what a fully custom Dobsonian telescope can be when every limit is pushed at once: every structural choice calculated, tested, and deliberately over-engineered, because at this scale nothing is left to intuition.
It stands 3.30 metres tall, weighs 195 kg in structure alone, and still splits into two transportable sections. This is what happens when custom has no ceiling.
Take a look
Structure built in Italy, optics by Jean-Marc Lecleire.
Every mechanical element engineered from scratch — precision-crafted, calculated, and made to perform under a real sky.
The 1-meter telescope
Behind an instrument like this there is no production line — only two people and a workshop in Italy.
We build the entire structure by hand: every ring, strut, and bearing machined, fitted, and aligned in-house. For the optics we turned to French master optician Jean-Marc Lecleire — twice laureate of the Société Astronomique de France and co-author of the reference work Réalisez votre télescope — whose figuring of the one-metre mirror gives the instrument its heart. Structure and optics, each in the best possible hands.
Engineering at Scale
Scaling a Dobsonian telescope to a full metre isn’t a bigger version of the same instrument — it’s a different engineering problem entirely.
Weight doesn’t grow in proportion, it grows against you. We’ve built 80 and 85 cm instruments whose structures weigh 70–80 kg; at a full metre — barely 15 cm more in diameter — the structure more than doubles, to 195 kg. Every one of those kilograms then has to be held perfectly still, from the horizon to the zenith.
Our answer was margin: additional carbon-fibre reinforcements, oversized load paths, and a structure built stronger than the numbers demand. At this scale, we’d rather over-engineer than find a limit under the stars.
The Mirror Cell
A one-metre mirror is only as good as the cell that holds it. Flex the glass by a fraction and optical quality collapses — so the support system is calculated, not assumed.
Using PLOP mirror-cell software, we modelled the deformation of the glass across different layouts, including a 27-point cell — three times our usual design. Counter-intuitively, the 27-point cell performed worse, introducing more deformation than the simpler one. The data chose for us.
The result is an 18-point floating cell, paired with a lateral rocking support on ball bearings placed exactly at the mirror’s centre of gravity. More points aren’t better. The right points are.
All-Carbon Structure
Like the Lasermax IV, every tubular element of the 1-Meter is carbon fibre — not only the main truss poles but every tie-rod and spacer across the secondary cage and rocker box.
The main truss uses 50 mm carbon tubes: the section the calculations called for, then taken a step beyond. Carbon delivers the two things that matter most at this scale — stiffness and fast thermal stability — at a fraction of the weight of metal.
Optical Precision at f/3.3
At f/3.3 the light cone is fast and wide — and that changes everything downstream. A 2″ focuser would vignette it, so the 1-Meter runs a Feather Touch 3″ TRUE focuser to carry the full beam.
A focal ratio this short also produces coma — stars near the field edge stretching into tiny comet shapes. A dedicated 3″ coma corrector flattens the field so stars stay pinpoint from centre to edge.
Guiding it all: the Nexus StarDrive GoTo system, with harmonic-drive motors and encoders resolving 311,296 steps — observatory-grade pointing and tracking, on a one-metre Dobsonian.
Design Philosophy
Every element of the 1-Meter is the result of targeted engineering — calculated for weight, rigidity, and real-world performance, then given deliberate margin.
No decorative mass, no unnecessary material. At this scale we don’t build to the limit — we build past it, so the sky stays the only variable left.
Divisible Structure
A one-metre Dobsonian you can actually move. Despite its 3.30-metre height and 195 kg structure, the 1-Meter separates into two sections — the base and the upper structure — each handled and transported on its own.
The same stainless-steel ball terminals and precision sockets used across our instruments make assembly fast and repeatable, so a telescope this size goes from transport to sky by hand — no crane required.
Handmade in Italy
This instrument took two months of work — machined, assembled, and aligned entirely by hand in our workshop in Italy.
DocTelescope has never built the same telescope twice. The 1-Meter is where that principle is pushed as far as it will go: engineered from scratch, by hand, for one sky.
Dobson
Lasermax IV
Modular, transportable, fully customizable - the pure Dobsonian experience.
Newton
Structure
Engineered to support advanced astrographs with absolute stability.
EVERY
Doc Telescope
is custom.
The 1-Meter isn’t a special case: it’s the same custom process, at any scale. Every DocTelescope is built custom, from a 12″ traveller to a full metre and beyond, each one engineered from scratch around the way you observe.
Whatever size you have in mind – from a compact traveller to the largest instrument you can imagine – there’s a DocTelescope that’s exactly right for you.
Whatever size you have in mind – from a compact traveller to the largest instrument you can imagine – there’s a DocTelescope that’s exactly right for you.