[Terran]

I took the telescope to Bintel today. They had a look at the mirror and it turns out the scratches must have been hairs and a lot of dust etc on it that they cleaned up, but weren't concerned about. The mirror did have some of the front edges slightly chipped away, which they told me was common and wouldn't interfere with the view. They collimated it and told me that I couldn't collimate my laser without some special factory mill tool or something like that. So they kept it and said I would be sent another one when they get new stock on December 3rd. I wanted to buy an air blower to help clear my eye pieces but they were out of stock. I did manage to get a 12mm eye piece which they recommended at my request for advice on which new eyepiece I should get, and a sight tube (Orion Collimating Eyepiece).

Taking it home, I took extreme caution not to risk bumping it out of collimation. They told me that I will need to use the moon filter because the view will be so bright now that it is collim... ahhh, re-collimated, supposedly anyway. I dared to try it first without the filter, and found the view exactly the same as it was before. I put on the filter and it was darker and dull, similar to cloud cover. The filter is supposed to help you see more detail, but it did the opposite. I looked into the focuser to check the collimation, and surprise surprise, it wasn't done properly! It was closer than before, but still not right. Using my new sight tube, it was easier to pinpoint how far it was out.

The mirror should be getting the light, and the only reason I can come up with why I don't see anything is because of the collimation. There are automatic lights around from the unit complex I live in, but I can't see how they could interfere with the view this much. They told me I should be able to see structures everywhere, but I can't see anything. Just a few more white dots than the finderscope. It was windy tonight, but I don't see how that could affect things either, because my view of the moon and jupiter had almost no waviness at all. I even managed to see 3 of jupiters moons shining nearby as pixel sized white dots. At first I thought they were the reflection of something onto the eyepiece. The Orion nebula is only just there now with a tiny spot of illumination, but the stars in the area are more clear.

The Bintel crew were easy to talk to and did seem like their hearts were in the right place. They explained some things to me and tried to help, but here I am still with 2 failed collimation attempts and an expensive telescope that doesn't do anything .

I'm sorry to trouble you guys with all these problems, and thank you for your time trying to help. I just don't know what else to do with it and I'm thinking of just packing it in and giving up. Below is a picture of my current collimation. Could someone please tell me if that is an acceptable allignment, and what I should expect to see with it in its currrent state? Note that even though the collimation is closer, the focuser ring is way off no matter how collimated it is. Also, does the collimation need to be exact, like a magnifying glass burning paper? For example - you get nothing until you get it almost perfectly right.

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6905/2ndtryye8.jpg