Cleaning primary and collaminating 10" Dob,first time

[Stuart78 (Stuart)]

Hi guys i have just finished collaminating my 10" dob after i took the mirror out as it needed a clean, i cleaned it using the methods on this forum, soaked it in warm soapy water for 30mins and rinsed it for 5mins followed by a final rinse of demineralized water then air dryed, for some reason it had a serious film of crud on it kinda like when your windscreen gets badly filmed up afer using aircon alot and it was affecting quality quite abit putting halos around everything i looked at, anyway i collaminated it using a film cannister i also had to adjust the secondary a little, not much fun at all i then took it outside and tweaked it doing out of focus star test untill it looked spot on, is it a good method to tweak a mirror while doing star test?? anyway afterward i took a glimpse at something faint such as 47 tucana and it looked clearer and brighter than i have ever seen it and it was't even a clear night so i think i must have it fairly close to spot on, and i reckon the mirror must be cleaner now than when i bought it new for some reason, i am looking at getting a proper collaminating tool this week so it should be interesting how good of job i done with the film cannister.






Cheers,
Stu....

[bmitchell82 (Brendan)]

everybody has a different way of culmination but i belive the 2 step of laser/cheshire is pretty dyam good, then followed by a star test.

i did this out on a deep sky night and the results spoke for themself! on star test with a 20mm ep and a 5x power mate had almost concentric rings it was a thing of beauty!