Stumbled upon a really useful article on my Astronomy reader – written by the CuriousAstronomer…every “telescope-user-beginner” has got to read it! And voila, my first reblog! 😉
These are really the essentials you’ve got to know when collimating your scope. If you need to collimate the secondary mirror of a reflector, you’d need to adjust the bolts on the spider to get the mirror aligned to the focuser (you’d need a sighting tube for this)…but mostly you’d only need to adjust the primary (the rear) mirror – and for that, just tweak the screws on it, till you get an out-of-focus star that looks like a doughnut :)) (pic is below). Here as well, a sighting tube or a laser collimator come in handy (though they’re not altogether necessary).

Heyyy thanks Rhodri for posting this up – been great meeting you! — who knew the world was so small!

thecuriousastronomer

I was on the BBC last week recording an interview which will go out this week. One of the topics discussed (in addiition to how to take a pee in the dark) was how to collimate a telescope.

Two types of telescopes – Refracting and Reflecting

There are two basic types of telescopes, refracting telescopes (which use lenses) and reflecting telescopes (which use mirrors). Either type of telescope can become mis-aligned, usually through the telescope being knocked. Putting it back into alignment (technically called collimation) is not a difficult process, and should be the kind of thing anyone can do with a little patience.

There are many expensive gadgets available to help you align a telescope, but none of them is really necessary. The easiest way to do it is to simply point the telescope at a star and then de-focus the image. You will end up with a…

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