Badly scratched secondary

[Dbroz]

Hi everyone

I am building a 18” truss and today I was trying to collimate the telescope and my secondary mirror fell off the spider and landed face down on my driveway. I will be now buying a new secondary, but I’m just seeing if this will still be usable to test my scope in the meantime. I have attached a photo of the damage. If I can please have any feedback. It’s too cloudy to even t test it out at the moment.

Thanks

Daniel 232484

[leon]

Daniel although it was a bad experience and the mirror seems badly marked you would be surprised at the results, ;)
Probably not ideal, and maybe some refraction, but it will still work depending at what you are viewing. :shrug:

Leon :thumbsup:

[Dbroz]

Thanks Leon for the reply

Like I said I will definitely be buying a new one, I just can’t stand looking at it, I was so careful handling the mirror when I got it, and today was the first time it’s been out of its box. I’m only using it for visual use, no photography. I was reading to use a sharpie texta to blacken the scratches, but this has scratches all over it, I’m not sure if blackening the scratches will make much difference. Anyway thanks heaps for your feedback

Regards

Daniel

[Wavytone]

The scratches will scatter a little light, not seriously though. As previously you will be surprised how little difference it makes.

Applying texta to cover them up will make it worse, optically.