In this site you can found information about Zeiss telescopes, accessories like filters, mounts, prisms, spectroscope and many orhers. You'll found catalogues, leaflets and other Zeiss's material printed during the year.

The original source of information  for the site are these catalogues, other websites like www.achromat.de (that was for long time out of line and recently was re-furbished), and a lot of sources including expecially published material on Zeiss (a big reference is Zeiss Historica magazine and site) and announcements on sites like Ebay, Astromart and Cloudynights.

Contacts: conservation (underscore) biology AT yahoo dot it

Why a site on Zeiss Telescopes?

This site is intended for collecting information about the very famous firm of Zeiss (Carl Zeiss Jena, Carl Zeiss West and Zeiss), and to make it available to amateurs astronomers as well as Zeiss collectors.

There are a number of sources around the web on Zeiss Astro, but in my knowledge no one that can be intended as a gate to information widespread in internet concerning this very interesting field of technical manifacturing. So, we'll try to fill this gap, without having the intention to be definitive in this work, but just to offer information for people interested in the history of probably the most know producer of telescopes in the world.

Carl Zeiss Jena starded to make telescopes at the end of XIX Century, after death of Carl Zeiss in 1888, under the guidance of the famous Ernst Abbe. First catalogue of astronomical instruments "Astro 1" was published in 1889.

Following Zeiss Historica views, Abbe found Max Pauly who had experience with large telescope construction as a side business while working full time as a manager of a sugar production plant. Within a few years, they were constructing telescopes and accessories for general commercial use and, surprisingly, large scale observatory telescopes. These were manufactured and erected in the Zeissworks in Jena for quality control purposes and deconstructed and then moved to the customer's site to be final constructed.

Zeiss production continued after WWII, and in the '60s was divided in two, togheter with the "Two Germany". Carl Zeiss Jena in the Eastern block, Carl Zeiss Oberckochen in Western Germany. Following the end of Berlin's Wall in 1989, Zeiss was re-organized and after 1995 ended to produce telescopes for the amateur's market.