Is this lens dead?

[jasonh]

Unfortunately I just sold this to a member here and after he cleaned the lens this was revealed :(

It does not look good at all and I suppose it is an example of a scope living inside an observatory.

I am giving a refund on the purchase but now wondering what I can do with this? I don't know exactly what the damage is, I guess it looks like the coating has been eaten away at multiple spots all over the objective.

Has anyone had any experience with this sort of thing? I am guessing that sending it back to Tak might be uneconomical.

Any ideas how much this has actually damaged the performance of the scope if I was to try and sell it at a reduced price?

Thanks,
Jason

[torana68]

wow :eyepop:thats nasty, you could have it cleaned professionally but if its been like it for a while the coatings may have been eaten, someone here will recommend somewhere to have it cleaned then youll know if its cactus or not, dont leave it long like that. Value? thats a fair bit of the value right there but might be fixable.

[Poita]

You should be able to feel it if it is the coatings on the outside.
any chance of some higher resolution images from a lower angle?

[dannat]

what did it look like before he cleaned it? what did he wipe it with? & yes a better shot will help

its had to tell but doesn't look like etching of the coatings to me - might be a reaction from some chemical with the coatings -hence what did he clean it with

pls tell me this isn't the Tak?

[jasonh]

I will ask him if he can, naturally he is absolved of the whole affair but hopefully he won't mind helping me out while it is with him.

Thanks,
Jason

[koputai]

What the hell did he clean it with? You may be taking a hit for a mistake someone else made.

[jasonh]

It looked like lenses do when you know condensation had formed on them. It lived in an observatory, with the cap on when not in use but I had also trapped a spider in there that decided to **** on it a dozen times.

That seemed to come off OK. I did remove one spider doo to make sure there wasn't an issue there but for all my years in astronomy I had been told not to clean a lens unless it required it so I left it as it was and let the buyer do it if he wanted to.

In hindsight (of course!) I would have saved myself hundreds in shipping if I had decided to send it all cleaned up and found the problem first. Oh well...

[jasonh]

Jason, I don't know what he cleaned it with but I would assume that if it was cleaned with something corrosive that it would have got rubbed all over the place rather than in spots.

[dannat]

the coat ins is hard, it would have to have been applied at the factory incorrectly to be rubbed off - hence it looks like some type of liquid either sitting there (from drying) or a reaction of moisture/chemicals

[pmrid]

It was cleaned only in a few spots to remove spider **** and then only with warm water on a cotton wool pad in a few spot locations. No chemicals were used at all. Not everyone is a complete idiot.
Here is a crop from the centre of the objective.

Peter

[jasonh]

Yes, it was the Tak, It seems to have had a short life and I was privileged to pay about $500 per hour of use from it eek.

[Miaplacidus]

Can you email the photo to Tak directly. Their boffins might have some idea.

(If you told me that photo was of someone's cornea, then I would have suggested that the diagnosis was herpes keratitis.)

[koputai]

Definitely looks like old damage doesn't it, and growth rather than just deposit. I hope it can be saved........

[Poita]

You can get herpes in your eyes?!?

Those ones lower down in the cropped shot look like the coating has been eaten, but hard to tell from the photos.

I'd contact Takahashi and send them photos, they may have an idea to try re cleaning. I guess its possible that it could be sitting on top of the coatings, but I wouldn't be feeling super optimistic.

[andyc]

Would suggest perhaps something's grown on the lens from spores(?). Perhaps the addition of water was enough to activate them but not to remove the spores. Or possibly crystallisation from a solution around seed points? Those star shapes definitely look like either something living or something crystallised out of solution. But am really no expert at all - though I've seen 1cm lichens growing on an old uncleaned primary mirror that was left for a decade :eyepop:.

The more I look at it, the more it looks like crystallisation - maybe salts from the water, or produced by the mix of water and whatever was on the lens surface pre-cleaning?

I hope you can find a way to fix it!

[jenchris]

looks like pollen or spores - most of it will clean off with iso I reckon

[pmrid]

the theory overlooks that the lens was not cleaned across it's whole surface. As I said, it was spot cleaned with water only in the few locations where spider poop was. The growth, whatever it is, is across the entire lens surface - edge to edge.

So whatever it is, it has been there for some time, it is related to some common cause, loks fungicidal and is uniform across the whole surface.
Peter

[mplanet62]

If you did not see the actual spider - that's fungi growth. Looks like spiderweb, too. And it affects the optics profoundly - if left for too long. The only way to find how much damage was done is to clean the stuff off professionally - you don't want those spores all over your house, and primary cell assembly and collimation is a smart business in refractors. Considering the possible cost of all of this - not much resale value there might be. Sorry.
As a best case scenario, after you pay the cost of fixing it - you'll have a good scope back. Tak may be worth it.
P.S. It's not the first time I hear about this problem with Tak. Does it mean anything?

[Hans Tucker]

I really wish I could find the thread on Astromart by Roland Christen (Astro-Physics) that covered a lens recovery that was in a similar, possibly worse condition, to this lens. I believed it used Acetone, Prurosol and human saliva.

[dannat]

Talking of saliva, I know of 2 very exp bino users/cleaners that finish there bino cleaning with hot breath always with a eyeglass lens cloth, it removes all cleaning marks apparently

[Hans Tucker]

Found it, posted back in 2009 on a AP 130EDF refractor that by looking at the images was in a similar condition. He used the following: Acetone, Baader Optical Wonder, Purosol, Balzer's Substrate Cleaner #2, Ultrajet compressed air, white Kleenex and Lint-Free Optowipes.

First step: Blow all loose dust and dirt off with compressed air or airbulb and soft brush.

Spray the surface with Baader Optical Wonder (once or twice as needed) and gently wipe clean with white Kleenex - use almost no pressure! This is followed by several applications of Balzer's Substrate Cleaner and one or two wipes with Purosol, all with Kleenex.

To get rid of the shiny spots, we have to use a magical cleaner, which is available at no charge to everyone. That cleaner is saliva. Rub the surface where the shiny spots are with your finger moistened with saliva (don't worry, the finger will never scratch the surface of the coatings because it is the most ideal cleaning pad available for delicate optics. No cleaning cloth is as gentle as the human skin.) This must be followed immediately by either Purosol or Baader Optical Wonder applied with Kleenex so that the saliva does not remain on the surface more than a few seconds. You may have to repeat this procedure a few times for stubborn spots, but eventually they will grow smaller and disappear.

The final cleaning will be a complete wipe of the surface with Optical Wonder and Kleenex, followed by a final wipe with Acetone using the lint-free Optowipes. The acetone by itself will not clean anything off, but it will remove the faint swirl marks that are left behind by the other cleaning agents. Why not use Optowipes all the way through? Basically only the last step needs to be lint free, so no sense wasting these precious cleaning wipes.

[jasonh]

Thanks Hans, thats good information for me,obviously coming from someone who has had some experience with optics :)

I will give it a go when the scope is back with me and see what happens.

Out of interest, did that thread come to a conclusion? Did it say how the other scope turned out?

[Hans Tucker]

In the words of Roland "pristine like the day it was born"
and the images he posted testified to the cleaning process.

I wonder, as a test, if you wet your finger with saliva and gently rub a spot on your lens whether some of the spot will be removed.

Also, have a look at the attached instructions.

[Regulus]

This looks like the end result of fungal growth which may have developed from the spiders droppings and it destroys coatings.
There are a number of optical business in Australia that do various kinds of lens polishing and coating. Someone like Longman Optical in Hobart do flourite coatings etc. See their web site here:
http://www.longmanoptical.com.au (http://www.longmanoptical.com.au/page/products.html#optical)

Good luck. The glass is to good to waste.

Trevor:confused2:

[Exfso]

I would say that lens is cactus, it looks one helluva lot like my TOA130 looked after someone sprayed insect repellent in the general vicinity of my scope at Snake Valley a couple of years back. That ate into the coatings, I needed the lens replaced, or in my case the whole cell.

[rally]

Link here to Roland's thread

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=657351

First 4 posts have photos attached.

[brian nordstrom]

:( Bummer ..
I made the same mistake years ago with a 70mm celestron achro , I used commertial isopropyl alcohol and it ate into the coatings , exactly like you have here ,, So its a TAK ? :question: .
Hope this helps , you have to find out what he used to clean these optics with .
Sorry to be the one to say ,, but as the old saying goes ....
Dont touch any optics unless you know what you are doing , I learned that the hard way , even tho it was a way cheeper scope .
Good luck.
Brian.

[bojan]

This looks like fungus to me.
Try with vinegar (100%) - I managed to clean fungus from one lens completely, with no traces left. It will not damage the coating or glass.

[dannat]

i saw the btter pic you posted on CN -definitely looks like growth

i used vinegar followed up with acetone to clean up some old bins, my advice is to use a fairly wet cotton ball/q tip/lens tissue - the drier the scratchier

[dazastar]

Hot breath works even better after eating pepperoni and chilli....lol:lol:

[leon]

This is just MHO, but I would just replace the Objective, I have seen a Canon 500mm F/4 bounced on its head and it smashed the front element, one looking at that lens would say it is stuffed, but no, it was sent to Canon and the front element was replaced, and at a reasonable cost i might add,

Maybe this is possible in this case.

Leon