Why does collimation scare people?

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Time and time again there are comments made in this forrum such as:
"Collimation, the word gives me the goosebumps"
"I've had my scope for a year but haven't been game to try collimation"
"I guess I should collimate my scope, but its too scary"
These are probably all from guys who wouldn't think twice about changing a wheel on their car, or putting together some flat pack furniture, both IMO more difficult than collimation. What's more you can't damage anything by wrong collimation, unlike changing a car wheel where you could have the jack collapse and the car crush some part of you. No matter how much you stuff up collimation, the process is always reversible.
When I was wandering around at the South Pacific Star Party looking through other people's scopes, I reckon more than 70% were so badly collimated it was obvious at a glance.
So what's the problem? Why does such an essentially simple procedure scare people?
Geoff

[adlsa5092]

The same reason as why people pour 10 tonnes of concrete for a pier just in case they get a 'poofteenth' of a micro-gram on the Richter scale that might vibrate their scope - overlooking the fact that gear backlash/scope mechanicals, wind etc (no matter how much 'training', balancing, biasing, triage, montage, focusing etc you do) introduces more vibration/movement than a good quality tripod.

Perpetuated myth, mystique and bollocks I'd reckon!
Ian

[iceman (Mike)]

Good point Geoff, the analagies are spot on.

It really doesn't have to be so scary.. I guess it's because people are told that touching the mirrors is scary.. washing the mirrors is scary and should never be done, etc.

It's a skill like any other skill- it has to be learned, and once you've learnt it, it's not scary at all and only takes 1 minute to do before each session.

[DJVege]

I figure, if you spend $1000s of dollars on something, you'd be worried about breaking or scratching it. Especially if you're a noob, like me.

Take me for example, on the weekend, I completely took apart my telescope's front end....and put it back together the wrong way! What I was trying to do was collimate the secondary, but didn't see the 3 screws till too late. 50 smudges on the glass (not mirrors) later, I had it back on, and the next day I drove over to Phil's who took it apart for me, cleaned the glass and the mirrors, and collimated it perfectly. Now I know much more about how Newtonians work, and collimation, so i'm not worried about collimating, or taking apary my scope.

However, i'll still be very cautious!

[SkySearcher (Daniel)]

I bought my GSO dob 2 weeks ago and never thought of collimation as particularly scary. I think the thing that scares people the most, is that they don't want to touch the collimation for fear they may never get it back to how it was in the first place. After I had, had a look through my scope the first thing I did was play with the collimation . I figure if I adjust it so it's way off then at least I'll know I'm doing the right thing if I can get it roughly back in line.

Incidently, I still don't know if my scope is collimated as well as it could be, the star tests look nothing like those i've seen on the internet. My previous scope was an 80mm refractor so obviously even if it's not collimated my new 12" will show much more. Any advice on an object I could use to test my scope on? eg a double star.

Cheers

Daniel

[g__day (Matthew)]

I agree with Doug, until you've done it the first time, you don't know how difficult it is, if you will smudge or scratch things nor how much better you're seeing will be. So its alot of unknowns and if ou're risk adverse you stop there. Personally I reckon get these folk (self included) to a star party and have a session where someone with expertise shows you the answers to all these things, then we could pass on these learnings too!

[KenGee (Kenith Gee)]

Newts are easy, SCT's are a bit harder a Classical Cass like Vixen VLC is harder still, a Mak like an MK69 is very hard and a F1.5 Schmidt camera is very, very hard.

[xelasnave]

I was fortunate to build a scope and I think that helps take away the fear or mystery.... mind you I am hesitant to clean my mirrors these days because of "polishing" a mirror a little to get out some blemishes after it was coated ... mmm... stupid in retrospect but I learnt something from the whole experience and understand optics a little better .
Anyways the 150sn is in bits at the moment for a clean and a better focuser instalation,so it will be interesting to see if it works better or worse... if worse justifcation for a new scope... you cant loose .
alex

[Glenhuon (Bill)]

Newtonian collimation is a bit daunting the first time you try it. The article posted here on IIS is a great help and armed with that bit of knowledge, I managed it first time. The views through my 150 have greatly improved. Now that its done, the (very welcome) rain has arrived in Coota. Time to build that artificial star gismo

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

My personal experience with a home-made newt was that collimation is hard when you first try it since you won't have any suitable tools, and also the process is somewhat non-intuitive.

It takes a while to come to grips with ideas like offset- vs non-offset or partial-offset concepts for the secondary mirror, and also to understand that you have to religiously work from closest component to furthest component in order (ie focuser, seondary, primary).

The biggest improvement for me came with the purchase of the catseye tools, suddenly it was easy to see what was going on and come to grips with it.

I used to use a laser as part of my collimation process, and dropping that has also made a big difference. Now the only laser I use is a barlowed laser. Normal (non-barlowed) lasers are pretty much useless as far as I can see, and even worse is that they can give you a "collimated" reading that has no relation to reality. If there's one thing I hate worse than a tool that doesn't work then its a tool that says it works when it doesnt, and a bare laser is in that category of "misleading tools" :-)

Collimating a SCT is easier, as there is only the secondary to adjust :-)

cheers, Bird

[astro_nutt]

A good idea for first timers in collimating a newtonian is to keep a record of movement..the amount of partial turns per adjustment screw..(A..B..C) on either the Primary or Secondary..eg..A 1/4 out...B 1/8th in...C 0...just in case is doesn't work you can reverse the right screw without guesswork..saves a bit of grief!...and for goodness sake don't tighten the screws too much!!!...a tad more than finger tight should suffice!
Cheers!