6 Diffraction Spikes?

[Moon (James)]

Guys- as maker of the primary I can assure you the mirror was astigmatism free and the original owner reported ( as I would expect ) very nice high power images with round extra focal stars and good planetary detail.

I sure we were only talking about the possibility of the optics being pinched somehow, well at least I was :-)

[bmitchell82 (Brendan)]

Mark as your name is attached to the mirror I have not a hesitation in the world to say that that mirror was perfect when it left your skilled hands!

Like you just said if its more than finger tight it will introduce stress to the mirror itself and this is what i was trying to explain earlier with my budgo Skywatcher dobsonian, the aluminium cell was warping ever so slightly which inturn pushed the mirror up into the rubber stops (and if you have seen the sky watcher system there is no metal its all rubber and soft) this was enough to produce the astigmatisim

James im unsure what your talking about. a infocus image is a infocus image wheather it be on the bench top or at a star they are all "testing". As soon as you release the mirror it will change or like I was saying previously as soon as i pulled the primary mirror cell out..... the cell would return to its equilibrium state as it is an elastic material and i was non the wiser for 6 months. I was at the brink of chucking the scope at a un desireable while driving fast i was that frustrated...

[Tandum (Robin)]

I checked and the bolt is only finger tight and the mirror has definitely been rotated. It's some other issue which Peter will have to solve, I'm putting my scopes back in the dome over the week-end.