101 Optical Telescope Designs is about optical telescope designs. It isn't about how to build a telescope, nor aberration theory, nor the history of telescope design. In particular, it isn't a book full of equations and theory. It is simply a comprehensive catalog of functional optical telescope designs. It provides readers with details of how specific telescopes are designed and function, and can serve as a starting point for those attempting new designs of their own. And of course, it's for amateur telescope makers who want to build their own instrument. From a professional point of view, it will also be of assistance to anyone attempting to perform a trade space analysis for a new optical telescope.

This book includes a brief discussion of each of the 101 designs. Every design has full technical details, and features some information about the specific history, along with characteristics and performance function. The designs are selected to span the available design space, ranging from simple refractors used in the 17th century, to the monster wide-field-of-view systems that are being developed for modern sky surveys. In between these extremes lies a cornucopia of useful designs and optical systems for amateur astronomers.