Asking For Some Telescope Advice ...Please

Originally posted by DJW001
reply to post by Dr Expired

 

Anyway put it together earlier , will try it out tomorrow night.

Happy first light!

Thanks mate...but now Iam fretting about this thing called collomation, and the fact I have no colamation equipment, they say a new scope needs to be collomated?
Will it be totally unviewable , without collomation?
Can you just paly around with the screws (hit and miss) the procedure looks daunting , if you have to collimate regularly ?
I want to transport this big scope by car when camping out , but now I find out I have to collimate at the camp site?

reply to post by Dr Expired


Congrats
Now get ready for months of waiting for a break in the clouds (always happens)

It's all about the mirrors & eyepiece and the rest of the telescope could pretty much be made from anything, a cardboard tube for example. That scope should give you some nice views of the planets.

Collimating is not a big deal at all and a solidly built & carefully handled scope may never need adjustment apart from the initial setup. Lumping it round in the boot of a car over rough roads will require regular checking but it's quite easy to do. Check out collimating tutorial - all you're looking for is to see the secondary mirror in the centre of the main mirror when looking into the eyepiece tube with no eyepiece in place.

As far as I am informed every and any telescope that is available to the general public is just so crap in its optics that it is a complete waste of your time and money. Even if you spend $ 10,000 USD that is still the main problem. So the only way around this bad optics problem is to commission the manufacture of your own once off optics. Stay away from a refractor because that would certainly be completely a waste of your time and money. Reflectors are far superior, but the cost of a proper mirror is prohibative. In order to get a good mirror manufactored you're going to have to splash out no less than $ 100,000 USD minimum. Then there is the additional cost of transport and mounting. Just the proper mounting and housing of it is extremely expensive. My advice is just to forget about it. Only the millionaires of this world can afford to own such luxury items.

My advice is that you approach astronomy with just the naked eye and a pair of binoculars. Learn the constellations. Then access images via the internet. Get to know your way around the sky. One of the amazing things to realise is that no matter if you had a good telescope still you would not be able to get anywhere nearer to the objects, because they are just too dim for a backyard telescope to observe. Andromeda Galaxy is eleven lunar diameters across, but even with a good size reflector you cannot see any of that structure. In deed space telescopes like as the Hubble have shown us that Andromeda Galaxy is ten times bigger than even that traditional estimation. So there are some very incredable things in the sky, but all of it requires at the least the Hubble Space Telescope for us to even begin to see it all. So my advice is DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY BUYING OR MANUFACTURING A TELESCOPE.

AVE RAEGINA CAELINA LA DEUS NOSTRA CAELI LA VERA DEUS

Please don't listen to the above poster.
He has no idea what he's on about. Proven time and time gain by any post made about astronomy.
You can see the andromeda galaxy easily in a very modest telescope, even in binoculars, infact you can see an awful lot with a 3" scope.

reply to post by Pilgrum


for collimation of a newtonian, it helps by making a spot with a black marker exactly in the center of your primary mirror, and then adjust your mirrors as per the tutorials you can find on-line. Don't worry, it won't ruin your telescope, as it is in the shadow of the secondary mirror, just be careful that you don't scratch the mirror in the process.

reply to post by Pilgrum


Thanking you for link and simplyifying the concept into onesentence

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reply to post by Hellhound604


Too late the drill has cracked the mirror


Only kidding

reply to post by CAELENIUM


You would make a good anti Telescope propagandist