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TIL my telescope collimation was off for months because of a YouTube video
Honestly, I've been taking fuzzy photos of Jupiter for like 6 months and just blamed the weather. Then I talked to this older guy at a star party in Tucson last weekend. He looked at my setup for 30 seconds and said 'your secondary mirror is way out of whack.' I watched his method of using a cheap collimation cap instead of a laser and holy cow, my images are actually sharp now. Anyone else had a random stranger fix your gear with a simple tip?
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hart.mark29d ago
Right there with you, buddy. Had some guy at a star party just reach over and tweak my focus knob a quarter turn while I was looking at something. My images went from "blurry alien blobs" to "okay, that's definitely a planet." Felt like a total goof.
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cameron53829d ago
Buy a cheap laser pointer and tape a piece of paper over the button. You can use it to point out stuff to people without accidentally hitting their scope. Saved me from looking like a doofus more than once.
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alex_nguyen19d ago
The collimation cap trick saved my sanity too. I was messing around with a laser that kept drifting and driving me nuts. An old timer at a club meetup handed me a cap he made from a 35mm film canister and a piece of aluminum foil with a tiny hole. I adjusted my secondary in like two minutes and everything snapped into focus. Sometimes the simplest tools are the best ones, right?
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