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10th December 2008 Collimation issues I suspect that my 10" scope has
collimation problems. After advice from
Chris Livingstone, I made
a paper mask for the secondary mirror. This has a small hole in the true
centre of the elliptical flat.
A laser collimator placed in the
focusing tube shows that the focusing tube is not aligned with the centre of
the secondary. (Picture taken by holding a mirror inside the scope
tube).
This shows that the focusing tube is off by at least 5mm.
This could be due to the scope tube not being truly circular, and hence a
misaligned focuser, or perhaps the secondary mirror in its supports is not in
the centre of the tube. How to tell which is which? The next two
pictures show a strip of paper used to measure the distance between the edges
of the secondary and the inside of the scope tube.The pointed end of the paper
is held just touching the inside of the tube. The second picture shows that
the secondary is indeed displaced, by an amount that agrees with how far the
laser was offset from the secondary centre.
To check the circularity of the tube I placed a strip of
paper around the inside of the tube with a line to show the point opposite the
focuser. The laser dot is very close to the line so there seems to be no
problem with the alignment of the focuser.
Each
vane of the spider has a nut which, when loosened, allows the vane to be
adjusted. All that is needed is to remove the matt black paint from the nut and
free the vanes.
Then the secondary is adjusted until the laser
beam hits the hole in the paper mask. Because it doesn't touch the paper it
doesn't show up in this picture. However, the laser dot could be seen hitting
the centre of the main mirror, which is where it should be.
The
view down the focussing tube. This is without adjusting the main mirror to
return the laser dot to the collimator. Nevertheless, all three primary mirror
fastening clips can be seen, which was not possible before. The red and yellow
lights in the centre are inexplicable. They seem to be coming from inside the
camera!
When perfectly collimated the reflection of
the secondary should be concentric with the green dot. The next step is to
place a paper disc in the centre of the primary mirror where the green dot is.
This will allow more accurate collimation as the centre of the mirror is
difficult to judge by eye.
29th December 2008 The centre of the 10" mirror needs to be marked to
enable accurate collimation. See this section
30th December 2008 With the centre of the primary mirror marked by a ring
binder reinforcement, accurate collimation can be done. The laser collimator
was placed in the focusser and the laser dot aimed at the centre of the mirror.
The primary was adjusted to return the laser beam to the centre of the
collimator.
Visual confirmation of collimation was made using a simple
aluminium plug with a small hole in it. Viewing through the hole should confirm
that the important parts of the optical system are in alignment.
This is the view through the collimating plug. The
smallest circle is the outline of the ring reinforcement. The next ring is the
outline of the collimating plug. The large circle is the outline of the main
mirror. The three circles are concentric.
Note that the reflection of
the secondary mirror and its supports is not quite concentric with the other
elements. This should not have much impact on the quality of images. (In
fact, some people say that the secondary should be offset a small
amount).
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