Thread: What Telescope?
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Old 09-01-2006, 10:43 PM
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davidpretorius
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davidpretorius is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Launceston Tasmania
Posts: 7,381
cj,

if you travel around with it a lot ie bump it, then i would check the collimation each time.

The smaller secondary mirror near the top needs to be collimated once a year ish.

The primary needs to be checked quite frequently.

Now there are threads and thread and lotsa thoughts on collimation. Laser colimation seemed to been a real "thing" to do, but good old mechanical collimation with a cheshire seems to be making a comeback.

I have a cheshire and believe i will always use it. I want to buy a laser as well. I want two methods. I would recommend a longer sight tube / cheshire for a 10" dob. The sight tube does the secondary, the cheshire does the primary.

If you want to be real precise, you then do star tests.

Do not try and take the following articles all in one hit as collimation is an ongoing learning curve.

first:
http://www.schlatter.org/Dad/Astronomy/collimate.htm
second:
http://legault.club.fr/collim.html
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