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Old 22-06-2010, 06:07 PM
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sheeny (Al)
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Oberon NSW
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Al's Collimation Aid (for imaging)

Allan Gould sent me a PM the other day asking if I could come up with a collimation aid for imagers, and this is what I've come up with.

Al's Collimation Aid is a resizable transparent window with:
  • a small cross hair at the centre of the window
  • 3 adjustable concentric circles
  • variable opacity of the circles and cross hairs
The concept is the "centre" circle can be adjusted to circle the centre spot of the Airy disc when it is visible, the "inner" circle is adjusted to match the inside diameter of the Airy disc, and the "outer" circle is adjusted to the diameter of the outside of the Airy disc. As the circles are concentric, any collimation error should be readily apparent.

The "centre" circle and cross hairs can also be used to centre on the star while in focus and then the inner and outer circles used to estimate the amount of mirror flop or misalignment of the focuser as the focus is adjusted.

If there's too many circles on the screen for you, just adjust them to zero radius.

As its cloudy here I can't exactly test it myself for real, but feel free to try it out and give me feedback.

Thanks for the idea, Al!

Al.
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