Hi guys,
It was clear tonight in old Melbourne town so I left work early enough that I could set up the scope in the backyard and align the finder, laser etc. After a bit of fiddling I finally got the finder aligned fairly close to the centre of the eyepiece field. Then I turned the laser on a tree over the back fence and aligned the laser with the cross hairs. I know there will be some problems with parallax, but at least they should be in a ballpark.
When the Sun finally went down I turned the scope on and pointed it at a bright star. Upon looking into the eyepiece the view was...less than perfect
The collimation is way out. It is so far out the star looks more like a comet at its best focus. I then pulled out the diagonal and put the eyepiece in on its own to check it wasn't the diagonal at fault...same problem.
So I grabbed a screw driver and thought i would adjust the collimation, but this raises a couple of questions for anyone familiar with the current model SCTs from Celestron. At the front there are three small phillips head screws which are over what looks like a plastic cover with C11 on it. Are these the collimation screws? Or are these just screws that hold the cover on? The picture in the Celestron manual looks totally different and talks about turning a cover to reveal the collimation screws. I don't want to undo these to find I did the wrong thing.
Also, anyone have any tips on how to get started where the collimation is so bad? Or got a few minutes on their hands
(and would like to see a CGE). Even looking at trees through the day gives a poor image.