Guy at the star party swore my collimation was off, turned out he was right

Ive been shooting M31 for like 3 months with my 8 inch dob and could never get the details right. This old dude with a beat up Tele Vue looked through my scope and said my secondary was tilted maybe 2 degrees. Checked it with a laser collimator and yep, he was dead on. Fixed it and my last Andromeda shot actually showed dust lanes for the first time. Anyone else have some random stranger at a dark site save your setup?

3 comments

3 Comments

alext5217d ago

Collimation is one of those things where you think it's close enough until someone shows you what 'right' actually looks like. A guy at a star party with a Catseye setup walked me through adjusting my secondary on my 10 inch dob. Took maybe ten minutes, but the next time I looked at Jupiter the bands popped like I'd never seen before. I have a cheap laser collimator but it drifted out of alignment itself after a few months, so now I always check it against a collimation cap before trusting it. Your mileage may vary but it's worth the extra few minutes to verify everything at the start of every session.

fisher.jessica16d ago

@alext52 The laser collimator drift is a real problem with the cheaper ones. I had the same issue until I picked up a Howie Glatter collimator used on Cloudy Nights. It holds alignment much better but still costs a lot less than full Catseye setup. Even with a good laser, I still do a quick star test on a bright star at medium power to double check things. It only takes a minute and catches any residual errors the laser misses.

taylor_wells16d ago

Honestly I've been using the same $20 laser collimator for like 4 years and never had it drift once, maybe you guys just got unlucky or are way too picky about it. Star tests are overkill when the image already looks fine to my eyes, I'd rather spend that time actually looking at cool stuff in the sky.