CAVE ASTROLA TELESCOPES
10" f/7 Cave Astrola under restoration by Jack Harper
Primary Mirror inscribed: M749387. 70" FL. Cave Optical Company. June 19, 1974
Cave Optical Company of Long Beach, California produced thousands of high quality telescopes for advanced amateurs and universities during the 1950s through the 1970's.
The telescopes have high quality optics and massive mounts and are rapidly becoming collectors items.
Following are scanned images of the pages of the 28-page Cave Optical Company catalog for 1975 along with the separate two price sheets. The thumbnail photos are in order -- left to right for the front cover and pages 1, 2, 3,... ,26, and the back cover -- Click on an image to see the full size page.
Note the beautiful classic larger observatory scopes up to 18 1/2 inches diameter:
Cave Optical 1975 Catalog
(Click on Image for Larger Size)
Links to Interesting Cave Astrola Related Sites
- Thomas Cave is the founder and was the operator of Cave Optical until it shut down in 1980. The site is an excellent writeup by Masatsugu MINAMI, Director of the OAA Mars Section, on Mr. Cave.
- Jeff Huston's Cave Astrola Owners/Enthusiasts Exchange web site has photographs and stories by current owners of Cave telescopes.
- 10" f/6 Cave Astrola is an excellent example of this classic scope.
- Telecope Blue Book has additional information...
- Moravian College has a nice 12".
- Hardin Optical -- Astrola mirrors live again! Larry Hardin, who worked for Cave Optical back in the 1960's, purchased the Astrola name from Thomas Cave in 1999. The site has very interesting photos of commercial mirror making.
http://www.frobenius.com/cave.htm -- Last Revision: 26 January 2002
Copyright © 1996 - 2008 Jack Harper (unless otherwise noted)
