Dennis
18-06-2008, 02:16 PM
Hello,
Ian (Law) and I recently had a session collimating our Mewlon 180’s using his Takahashi Collimating Telescope and found the overall procedure quite straightforward. It seems that Takahashi marks the centre of the Mewlon secondary at the factory, presumably to help their technicians collimate each ‘scope.
The Takahashi Collimating Telescope requires the secondary to be marked thus and in the daytime, by pointing the OTA at an evenly illuminated white wall whilst viewing the position of the centre spotted secondary through the Takahashi Collimating Telescope, a few tweaks of the x3 Bob’s knobs and voila, you can get almost perfect collimation. There is a small, Perspex window on the side of the Takahashi Collimating Telescope which illuminates a small internal diagonal mirror.
I did find that my eye could wander (a little) around the eyepiece of the Takahashi Collimating Telescope and thus it was difficult to determine a precise central position, although this only required a small tweak with a real star test at night to make it perfect.
One problem I did have was that there was some slop in the Takahashi 2” eyepiece adapter when it slid into the Moonlite Focuser. The Tak 2” eyepiece adapter has a machined groove for the grubscrew and the actual length of 2” barrel is not very deep, so it can “rock” in the Moonlite Focuser.:scared:
When I removed the native Tak Focuser adapter and replaced it with the Moonlite Focuser, the Tak 2” eyepiece adapter had to sit some 2 to 3 mm from the face of the Moonlite Focuser for the x3 Moonlite Focuser grub screws to locate in the machined groove of the Tak adapter. This led to some wobble and caused my collimation to be somewhat off the first time around.:eyepop:
In the end, I cobbled together the following hodge podge of parts to get the collimation spot on using the Takahashi Collimating Telescope:
Moonlite 2” to 1¼” adapter.
SBIG 1¼” to T-2 (Male) adapter.
Scopestuff SCT (Male) with internal T-2 Female thread to T-2 (Female) Adapter.
Baader Hyperion T-2 (Male) to M43 (Female) Adapter.
The Takahashi Collimating Telescope, M43 Male, then screws into the M43 Female.
Luckily I have acquired a box full of adapters over the years!:shrug:
Cheers
Dennis
Ian (Law) and I recently had a session collimating our Mewlon 180’s using his Takahashi Collimating Telescope and found the overall procedure quite straightforward. It seems that Takahashi marks the centre of the Mewlon secondary at the factory, presumably to help their technicians collimate each ‘scope.
The Takahashi Collimating Telescope requires the secondary to be marked thus and in the daytime, by pointing the OTA at an evenly illuminated white wall whilst viewing the position of the centre spotted secondary through the Takahashi Collimating Telescope, a few tweaks of the x3 Bob’s knobs and voila, you can get almost perfect collimation. There is a small, Perspex window on the side of the Takahashi Collimating Telescope which illuminates a small internal diagonal mirror.
I did find that my eye could wander (a little) around the eyepiece of the Takahashi Collimating Telescope and thus it was difficult to determine a precise central position, although this only required a small tweak with a real star test at night to make it perfect.
One problem I did have was that there was some slop in the Takahashi 2” eyepiece adapter when it slid into the Moonlite Focuser. The Tak 2” eyepiece adapter has a machined groove for the grubscrew and the actual length of 2” barrel is not very deep, so it can “rock” in the Moonlite Focuser.:scared:
When I removed the native Tak Focuser adapter and replaced it with the Moonlite Focuser, the Tak 2” eyepiece adapter had to sit some 2 to 3 mm from the face of the Moonlite Focuser for the x3 Moonlite Focuser grub screws to locate in the machined groove of the Tak adapter. This led to some wobble and caused my collimation to be somewhat off the first time around.:eyepop:
In the end, I cobbled together the following hodge podge of parts to get the collimation spot on using the Takahashi Collimating Telescope:
Moonlite 2” to 1¼” adapter.
SBIG 1¼” to T-2 (Male) adapter.
Scopestuff SCT (Male) with internal T-2 Female thread to T-2 (Female) Adapter.
Baader Hyperion T-2 (Male) to M43 (Female) Adapter.
The Takahashi Collimating Telescope, M43 Male, then screws into the M43 Female.
Luckily I have acquired a box full of adapters over the years!:shrug:
Cheers
Dennis