Tips for collimating a 12 inch newtonian

[Czechmate]

Anyone give me some tips on collimating my new 12 inch Newt

any help is appreciated:welcome:

[torana68]

try a search , there are some good threads that explain all, what focal ratio?

[MichaelSW]

A thread in Beginners Equipment Discussion started by Chirpy3476 (Danial) titled Collimation 22-12-2013 with post #3 from barx1963 (Malcolm) giving very useful link to article on collimation.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=115675&page=2

[Allan_L]

YES, the Astro-baby document is also my first choice when recommending a collimation guide.

[barx1963]

Hi Czechmate
Congrats on having a 12", it will give many years of great observing. My usual piece of advice with collimation, assuming you are a visual observer, don't get tied up in knots. If you think about it, all you are trying to do is align 2 mirrors. You will see lots of articles with lots of technical jargon, but best bet is keep it simple. Other important tip is don't rely solely on a laser. A laser collimator is fine for fine tuning the tilts of the secondary and the primary but cannot do it all. It cannot tell you if the secondary is centred under the focuser for example.

Finally, what model scope do you have? Traditionally the GSO scopes have had fairly ordinary springs and knobs on the primary. The knobs have been upgraded but I am not sure if the springs are better these days.

Cheers
Malcolm

[rrussell1962]

Hi Czechmate, is that the OTA that I think I sold to you a while ago on here? If so PM me if you still need help with collimation and I will pop over and do it for you and walk through the process when I get some time off in a few weeks time. Or Wed or Thurs next week daytime. As I recall Bob's knobs on secondary and primary with upgraded springs, GSO optics.