[NightCal]

I’ve been using my 8” LX200 classic for 4 years now. Its main use has been for lunar and planetary imaging with colour and mono-chipped Toucam Pro IIs. My scope set up has a permanently mounted 33cm long dew shield attached to scope. This makes any system that involves looking through an eyepiece to adjust the collimation somewhat problematic as I don’t have 2 metre long double-jointed arms. To adjust the collimation I need to be standing at side of or in front of the scope.

I have always given the collimation a quick check before imaging by lining the telescope on a brightish star then popping the webcam in the back. I then defocus the star and compare the resulting doughnut with the red concentric circles reticle on K3CCDTools. If it’s out, I adjust the collimation knobs so that the shadow of the secondary is dead centre of the reticle on the computer screen.

I’m always keen to improve my images and felt I was getting close to the limit of what I can do with my scope and camera set up. So I did a bit of reading around and realised that my collimation assessment method may not be anything like sensitive enough. So here are my questions.

1 - Is this collimation checking technique sensitive enough for planetary and planetary imaging? (My guess is no).
2 - Is using a laser collimator sensitive enough?
3 - I’ve tried using Metaguide software ( http://www.astrogeeks.com/Bliss/MetaGuide/ ) for checking the collimation. On paper, it seems to provide the ideal combination of sensitive tuning and autocentreing between adjustments. However, in reality, I’ve found the autocentreing hasn’t worked and I’ve found it confusing and difficult to use. In fact, I’ve only ever seemed to make the collimation worse, not better! I’m sure this just down to me being a klutz. Should I persist and learn how to use it properly, or will a laser collimator give me just as good or better results?
4 – Has anyone got any other suggestions for hardware, software or techniques that might help me quickly and easily fine tune the collimation?

Thanks