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Old 19-10-2018, 09:56 AM
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mental4astro (Alexander)
kids+wife+scopes=happyman

mental4astro is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: sydney, australia
Posts: 4,979
Tareq,

As Jeff said, the quality of those photos certainly suggests your scope is very well collimated. But a star test is always a good way to shake up the scope to make sure it is performing at its very best. Like I said, you can settle for "good enough", or you may want to make sure that your scope is performing at its very best or if a little tweak is needed.

From your photographs, keep this in mind - there is a very different image scale being used with the Moon and the planets! The Moon shots look sharper because the image scale is small. The planets are softer because there is a lot more magnification being used. This can make things very misleading unless you are comparing images ALL at the same scale, otherwise it is a useless comparison.

Certainly don't collimate just because "people say so". YOU need to check things out for yourself, and ONLY act if you see a need to improve things. And if you find out that there is no more room for improvement with the collimation of your scope, then don't touch the blooming thing!

And star testing really needs to be done under good seeing conditions. Especially when really pushing the scope to its very, very best. You really do need steady seeing in order to be sure of the star figure the scope is throwing up, and any shimmering, boiling movement is not helpful.

A star test is what will tell you if you do need to tweak the collimation or not. Not me or anyone else

Alex.
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