Quote:
Originally Posted by adman
I don't think I will ever buy another laser collimator
I have just spent a couple of hours looking at my collimation as I had been relying on a laser to get it right....
well - even a cursory glance down the focuser without the eyepiece shows that it was about as far from being collimated as you can get! 
So I made myself a collimation cap and have redone it visually. Now it looks right, but I will have to test it tonight and see how close it is.
How do other people collimate their newts??
I am going to post the results from testing the collimation of my collimator to show how horrible it is....a warning to other unwary newt owners.
Adam |
Hi Adam,
I spent a weekend getting my el cheapo Orion style ( I think) laser set up. As Brendan says, pull it totally to pieces and get a good feel for what goes where and does what. You need to have one that has the three collimator screws in the casing. I also tried the alfoil trick, although the hole in the casing was actually quite small, it was just getting the laser lined up with it that was the problem. Eventually got it though.
My eventual collimation was about 1cm circle at 2 metres. I could have got it better, but for me, that was enough for the first go. You do need the V block. I used two .90c rt angle brackets from Bunnings, screwed to a piece of wood.
As I said in a post on barlow laser collimation (with pics) in Beginners forum here the other day, it all came together and seems to work well. If you want any additional info or pics, etc, drop me a PM.
Clear skies tonight, I'm using the newly collimated Newt with QHY8+MPCC to do some galaxy hunting trials around the LMC. Looks good so far.
Cheers,
Mike