Hi Again,
Yes its me, the guy with the collimation problem.
OK I checked it again last night at 2am when the clouds buggered off and found the coma was so bad I couldnt even focus on Jupiter at zenith!. I could see the cloud bands just off focus but the double image ghosting was rendering the view unusable. Single star test? forget it! I even spent an hour outside at 2am collimating in the field and got no discernible improvement.
I have Quadruple checked the collimation and everything is concentric including the centre spot on the primary and the secondary reflection as well as the secondary vanes and the cheshire reflection in the focuser tube.
I spoke with the shop and the distributor and they have agreed to replace the
entire OTA with a brand new one as they and I suspect that there is an issue with the Secondary corrector lens and /or the primary mirror.
After all the pain I have gone through with this, I am glad that the issue is not with my methods, but it still hasnt put me off what is essentially a good scope (minus the mount problem, the altitude setting problem and the collimation problem). I am therefore quite happy with this result.
I will be hopefully even more happy when I get my new beastie home, set it up and get some serious clear, in focus and coma free images of the good stuff I have been seeing through my binoculars for the last two months.
I will post a followup to this once I have the replacement, with some pictures of an in focus Jupiter, if the weather lets me.
Thanks for staying with my thread, phew....
Chris