Collimation/adjustment Newtonian 8"-12"

Pretty well adjusted

( 4 / 5 )

My telescope was pretty well adjusted. It was e-mailed to me that the factory had installed the secondary mirror at an angle, which was corrected and other necessary adjustments made. When the telescope arrived to me, I looked through it using a collimation eyepiece. Only very slight miscollimation was there, much less that what you'd expect from factory telescopes without collimation service. I assume this very slight miscollimation happened during shipping. Secondary mirror spider vanes were pretty tight, but I slightly tightened them more to avoid mirror droop when changing angle. Secondary centering had up to 0.5mm error, which I corrected, and I'm not sure if this error was there after collimation service or if it came from me slightly tightening the spider vanes. After these adjustments, I improved secondary mirror tilt, only finding that it was very hard to do (maybe due to slightly out-of-round shape of secondary mirror), but I was able to slightly improve it. After this, the primary collimation was perfect. So it looks like the secondary mirror tilt was slightly changed during shipping, but the primary mirror stayed in its position. I tightened all three secondary mirror tilt screws fraction of an angle to better lock the secondary in its position so this wouldn't happen again. The primary mirror locking screws were tightened to hand tightness after the service. They could have been tightened with a screwdriver to slightly above hand tightness to better lock the primary in its position, which I'll do if the primary starts to go out of collimation. Overall, after well-adjusted telescope with this service, the collimation adjustments I had to do after shipping were very minor, and took less than 15 minutes. I recommend this service, saves your time. Factory telescopes tend to arrive very badly collimated.