Collimating!

[Kylee]

Well, I thought I'd have a go at collimating my new scope last night. Wasn't sure if it would need it as the chap I purchased it from had done it before we collected it. Thought it would be good though to have a look and see what it was all about. Also it had been in the car for 300 miles so it might have needed a tweak.

After 2 hours of not really knowing what the hell was going on...it suddenly came to me and I did it within about 2 minutes. I was chuffed for a few seconds but then thought...surely it can't be that simple?

Is it right that as long as the secondary mirror is ok....tweaking the primary is relatively simple! That's how it was in my case!! Either I've managed it and can be proud of myself or I've really cocked it up! I did read that 90% of errors are because people have altered things when the collimation was ok...and they weren't really sure what they were looking at!

Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh! I can see why people use refractors but hey this scope was a bonus in my mount kit!!!!

[MarkS]

Yes, if the secondary is OK then the primary is straihgtforward.  But how did you do the collimation?  Did you use a defocused star, a laser collimator or a cheshire eyepiece?

[Kylee]

I used a Cheshire....looked at lots of pics and it looked ok.

Fingers crossed!!

[Carole]

Kylee, if you want to be double sure there is a video tutorial on Astronomyshed which shows you how to collimate a newtonian.

Carole