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Well finally got around to doing a bit of a review of this piece of equipment.
First off the bat the star comes with two strips of velcro and a tripod mount. I fixed my velcro on the back of the star so that the control panel faces up while on the tripod.
While up in the Flinders Ranges I finally had an opportunity to use the Star. All that travelling had moved my collimation just a little, not enough to really worry about but enough when imaging to give slightly off images.
We set it up about 25metres away from us and set it to the highest setting because we were using it during the day. I have to say that at Mag one this unit pumps out the light and easily shows diffraction rings on my scope and any other that was being pointed at it. In fact, we managed to get the rings so close that you could just see the first ring from the star and then the outer ring was tight against the first. The unit goes from mag 8 -mag 1, which gives plenty of possible scope for use.
The Star worked perfectly, in fact upon checking with a real star I could not see any need for adjustment. The advertising was correct and no puff present. The actual star was so small it cannot be resolved by my 10" at 25m. A truely wonderful instrument and one that most telescope owners should consider investing in. Of course you could make one yourself, but you will not be able to get the hole small enough. And in addition, the variable brightness is of real value. You can collimate at night when the seeing is not so hot and use the lower settings to get an even smaller star.
Anyway, at some point I might submit a formal review of this item with star images and pics of the unit. Until then this will have to do.
Paul
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