Collimation

[beren]

Excellent article on collimation here http://www.astrosurf.com/legault/collim.html

[toetoe]

Great reading and should be very helpful, i have to do my scope but still don't know enough about it yet. Maybe i'm just scared to do it.. :shrug:

[Striker]

Funny you mentioned this Stuart...I did mine last night...took me about 5 minutes with Bobs knobs.

[rumples riot]

Yeah that site is very good, also try doing a search for collimation. Rod Mollise has a good page on this also. He is very approachable also. Sent him an email out of the blue with some images of my collimation and he responded within hours. Damien Peaches site also has some stuff on collimation.

[Robert_T]

once you take the path of collimation forever will it dominate your destiny ;) ... I find myself tweaking more and more, sometimes a couple times a night when planetary imaging and if I have to shift the scope across the zenith, but I'm probably just being fussy. Striker mentioned Bob's Knobs - I'd highly recommend getting these, don't know now how I ever did without 'em.

[rumples riot]

Yeah bobs knobs are the best for collimation. Speeds the process up. Really worth having. I try to collimate every time I image, not a lot though, just little tweeks. Less than a 1/128 of a turn.

[Robby]

Just a little dig......
Given the circumference of a bob knob this equates to a twist of 0.3mm on the circumference and 0.075mm on the actual screw! Wow you must have fine control of them there fingers... :)
But you are right you don't need to tweak the knobs much, but perhaps a little more that this.... :D
Cheers

[rumples riot]

;) hehehehe, yeah its just a tweek. Most of the time I go a little too far and it ends up being a bigger tweek. My collimation at present is pretty reasonable but tweek it a bit does bring it back up for the lousy seeing I have here. :P

Fine control of those big fat fingers. :nerd: