Welcome

We make superb brass refracting telescopes in the traditional style. As you go through this web site you will see pictures of the types of telescope that we make. They are all individually made to suit our customers' wishes and are designed to look wonderful, as well giving excellent optical performance. We have set ourselves the challenge of continuing the fine tradition begun by makers such as Cooke, Dollond and Watson.

We make accessories for telescopes. As you will see further on, we mostly work in brass. We make brass finder telescopes and matching brackets, as well as brass Plossl eyepieces. We make specialist eyepiece adapters and special star diagonals. We can make you a star diagonal that inverts the image completely, turning your astronomical telescope into a terrestrial instrument, or we can make you a star diagonal in which the image is still a true astronomical image, i.e. upside down and back to front.

We supply GCSE Astronomy Kits. We supply a kit of three lenses for those people who need to build a small telescope as part of their coursework. The lenses are an achromatic doublet for the objective lens and two, planoconvex lenses to make a Ramsden eyepiece.

We supply optical components. We can supply objective lenses for large refractors and we have a huge stock of smaller lenses, so that you can make yourself a finder telescope, for example, or eyepieces. Our larger lenses are all brand new, but the smaller lenses are often of military origin and of very high quality.   We make telescope tripods Our tripods are made of hardwood (oak or mahogany, for example) and brass. They are designed to suit the style of our own brass refractors. We can provide either altazimuth or equatorial heads. These tripods are large and are suitable for refracting telescopes

We supply ex Government optical components. We have some brand-new military eyepieces that are superb. If you like experimenting, we have all sorts of goodies such as x-y tables, military theodolites, filters, front-surface small mirrorsand a range of tube and materials. All of these are shown on this web site

A little about us

Our telescope making business started in 1981, in the city of Rochester, in Kent. It was originally known as I. R. Poyser (Engineering). We made small astronomical telescopes using 76mm diameter lenses with a focal length of 480mm.Those f/6.3 refracting telescopes were particularly popular at the time.

We also sold optical components such as lenses and prisms to those enthusiasts who liked making their own instrumentation. We acquired a good reputation as suppliers of ex government optical devices, such as tank periscopes, gun sights and anything that could be used for astronomy. We extended our range of telescopes to include 76mm refractors with a 1000mm focal length and for a while we made some rather beautiful 'officer of the watch' telescopes. They were two or three draw nautical telescopes that had polished, engraved brass drawtubes and were bound in dark red, 'antique' leather.

We moved to new premises in Dale Road, in Rochester, which some of you may remember. The business flourished and we made the 'Rochester' range of brass refracting telescopes. The lens cells of the telescopes, 76mm or 100mm, were in polished brass, as were the engraved back-plates and drawtubes, while the main tubes of the telescopes were made of aluminium alloy, stove-enamelled in a lustrous dark blue. (The firm of enamellers operated from the back of a garage, miles out in the Kent countryside!) During those fifteen years in Dale Road the name of the company changed to simply I. R. POYSER.

In 2002 we moved to Mid Wales, to the beautiful hamlet of Ystrad Meurig, where we now make our superb brass refracting telescopes and, if you require, our impressive oak and brass tripods to go with them.

We still make specialist telescope components for customers. We are proud to say that we have made some brass components for the 720mm refractor at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and its 6" guide 'scope. We make our brass Plossl eyepieces and we still supply optical components such as lenses, mirrors and prisms. We have a thriving trade in ex government eyepieces and we supply GCSE lens kits to those students who are studying the GCSE Astronomy course.

Thank you for taking the time to read a little of our story. It is quite astonishing that it has been almost a quarter of a century since it all started.

Enjoy our website and, if you are new to astronomy, we hope it will encourage you in your own journey to the stars.

Ian Poyser.