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grantch
15-01-2013, 10:27 PM
First ever collimation performed tonight on my 8" dob. Daunting task for the newbie but read plenty of how tos and found some good websites. Took around two hours of fiddling around just using the Cheshire, placing paper in the tube for secondary alignment etc, but, how good is the feeling when you get to the end and all all appears to line up :)

Now of course Brisbane is completely clouded over again, so no chance of a star test.

Was surprised how far out the secondary is. I am sure it gets bumped around being moved out to the yard, but it needing moving quite a distance away from the primary to centre, so it must have come from the factory pretty ordinary. On the other hand once that was done, very little adjustment of the primary needed.

Chalk up another first for this newbie.

Hans Tucker
15-01-2013, 10:42 PM
There is a 4 page article, starting on page 80, titled Easy Reflector Collimation in the latest edition (FEB/MAR 2013) of Australian Sky & Telescope that may be of interest to newbies.

grantch
15-01-2013, 11:22 PM
For a non video tutorial, which there are a bunch on youtube, I found this article really good as well.

http://www.astro-baby.com/collimation/astro%20babys%20collimation%20guide .htm

mark3d
16-01-2013, 11:23 AM
Congrats. Now just don't ever touch the 'scope! :D