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Old 14-10-2020, 10:56 PM
SkyWatch (Dean)
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SkyWatch is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Adelaide
Posts: 401
It looks to me like it is way out of focus: the black dot is the secondary mirror, which you wont see if you have an image focussed and your eye on the eyepiece. The collimation looks fine: the black dot is central as it should be. The white circle is the exit pupil of the eyepiece: this is the light that goes directly into your eye: your eye only dilates to about 2mm during the day, and up to 7mm at night, so any exit pupil that is bigger than that is simple wasted light. Have a look at this article if you are unsure about what this all means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_pupil

As Alan pointed out, the scope is not designed to focus on nearby objects, so I think you need to point the scope at a distant object (say a tree on the horizon) and turn the focus knob until you see a clear image. You might have to turn it quite a way, and experiment with clockwise and anti-clockwise because I think it might be a long way out, and there is no way to tell which way from your description and image. Once you have focused on a distant object you will find that it is almost in focus for the stars too, so it wont need much more tweaking at night.

While you are at it, line up the finder scope so it too is centred on the same object, and lock the nuts so that when you point at something at night you will be able to find it...

Good luck,

Dean

Last edited by SkyWatch; 14-10-2020 at 11:08 PM.
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