John Dobson, a former monk and self-taught stargazer who developed a powerful, inexpensive telescope that almost anyone could build and showed thousands how to do it during five decades as one of public astronomy's most influential evangelists, has died. He was 98.

Dobson died Wednesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said Bob Alborzian, coordinator of the Burbank chapter of Sidewalk Astronomers, an international organization that Dobson helped found in 1968. Dobson had been in poor health since a stroke a few years ago.

Called the "Johnny Appleseed of amateur astronomy," the lanky, ponytailed Dobson started building telescopes in the 1950s when he was a monk at the Vedanta Monastery in San Francisco. His passion for the hobby led to his expulsion, freeing him to become a roving ambassador for the simple joys of studying the nighttime sky.

"He really wanted to just share viewing the sky with people," said Anthony Cook, astronomical observer at Griffith Observatory. "He created a hobby and a type of telescope that ensured that people could build their own and look farther across the universe than was possible for most people before his time."

Dobson used cheap or salvaged materials such as ship portholes and cardboard tubing to make his telescopes, the most radical feature of which is a simple, sturdy and highly effective wooden mount that allows users to easily point the scope at any spot in the sky.

His design was eventually embraced by commercial manufacturers, who advertise the telescopes as "Dobsonians." They remain "one of the most popular telescopes on the market," said Dennis di Cicco, senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.

Dobsonian telescopes have made important contributions to astronomy, including the discovery in 1995 of Comet Hale-Bopp, the farthest comet ever discovered by amateurs. One of its namesakes, Tom Bopp, was using a Dobsonian.

Alborzian, who had known Dobson since 1968, said he once urged Dobson to patent his design. Dobson refused. "He said, 'These are gifts to humanity,'" Alborzian recalled. "His goal was to open astronomy to the common man."

Dobson had his critics. He did not, for instance, subscribe to the big-bang theory but favored the idea of a "steady-state" universe with no beginning and no end. "I'm not interested in just the stars," he told The Times in 2005. "I'm interested in the whole ball of wax."

Although the steady-state theory has been widely discredited, Dobson was an unwavering supporter, which caused many in the astronomy establishment to dismiss him.

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John Dobson dies at 98; former monk developed easy-to-make telescope