WEST MONROE — Celestial inspiration led Ryan Goodson to look into telescopes, and 10 years later he’s viewing them as a chance to run a business in a field he loves. “It started a little over a decade ago,” Goodson says. “I saw a fireball shoot across the sky when I was on my way […]
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WEST MONROE — Celestial inspiration led Ryan Goodson to look into telescopes, and 10 years later he’s viewing them as a chance to run a business in a field he loves.
“It started a little over a decade ago,” Goodson says. “I saw a fireball shoot across the sky when I was on my way to play golf one morning. I had no idea what it was.”
After some research, Goodson realized the fireball was a meteorite. But that research sparked a curiosity in astronomy, an interest that eventually compelled him to build his own telescope.
He assembled that telescope, which had a five-inch reflector, about six years ago. And he’s been building the instruments ever since, honing the craft to the point where he felt comfortable launching a business around it.
Goodson started New Moon Telescopes along with his wife, Heather, in June. He assembles the telescopes, while she handles the company’s underpinnings like its finances, taxes, and website. The Goodsons run the business from their home at 260 Tanner Drive in West Monroe, in Oswego County.
Ryan Goodson assembles the telescopes in a 1,100-square-foot workshop. It’s an ideal space for putting together the instruments, which can be quite tall, he says. For example, a telescope with a 12-inch reflector stands five-and-a-half feet tall, while one with a 30-inch reflector measures nearly 12 feet when assembled.
“You have to be able to have tall ceilings to test your very, very large telescopes,” Ryan Goodson says. “On our website, the smallest I have is a 12-inch reflector, and we have the capacity to go all the way up to 30 inches.”
New Moon Telescopes focuses on telescopes geared toward amateur astronomers, but the firm also wants to sell to universities and professionals, he says.
Aside from using the company’s website for marketing, Ryan Goodson plans to generate interest in his telescopes at “star parties.” Star parties are gatherings of amateur astronomers that draw people from multiple states.
“For a few days you basically throw a party for amateur astronomy that involves looking at the stars,” Goodson says. “They’ll come and bring telescopes. You have vendors set up.”
Eventually he would like to purchase land in Oswego County to host his own star parties twice a year. He’s not at that point yet, however.
The Goodsons want New Moon Telescopes to generate $18,000 in revenue by the end of this year. They would like to grow that to more than $100,000 next year, which would be their company’s first full year of operation.
New Moon’s telescopes are designed to be portable so that astronomers can move them. They feature a truss assembly that detaches and closes like an accordion — an improvement over standard trusses, which consist of several separate aluminum poles that can be difficult to assemble in the dark, according to Ryan Goodson.
Additionally, New Moon’s telescopes have some unique woodwork, he says. Goodson does not use screws to fasten together his instruments’ mirror boxes and rocker boxes, which he says is a typical construction method for telescope makers.
“We do all box joints,” he says. “The overall result has a mechanical advantage, and it’s prettier.”
New Moon’s telescope work can cost from $2,000 to more than $10,000, Ryan Goodson says. He can put together a “rebuilt” scope with a new enclosure around optics from a customer-supplied, mass-market telescope for about $2,000. But instruments featuring New Moon-supplied optics are more expensive.
Ryan Goodson does not make New Moon’s optics, although he says he has made his own for personal telescopes in the past. Instead, he purchases the optics, usually from Lightholder Optics, a California firm.
“The optic is about 50 percent of the cost on my end,” he says. “Buying that mirror, getting it here, and putting it safely in the telescope is a large part of the process. It’s very complex, and if you know the measurements involved in telescope making, there’s not much tolerance for error. If you have a 32nd or 64th of an inch error in your scope, you’re going to get bad views.”
Ryan Goodson is a board member of the Syracuse Astronomical Society. In addition to his business, he works in manufacturing at M.S. Kennedy Corp. in Clay.
Goodson was previously a manager for Raymour & Flanigan Furniture in Yorkville, and he’s moved around the country managing different furniture stores. He was in Kansas when he saw the meteorite a decade ago.
