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Celestron LCM114 and laser collimator


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Hello,

I've had a look through the forum but can't quite find the answer to my problem. After having my Celestron LCM114 for a month or so and being very impressed I was reading that the reason Jupiter might be appearing as a white "blob" could be because my scope needed collimating. Looked online and ordered a laser collimator as it looked so simple to use.

Having tried today all I can see when looking for the red dot in the primary is a red blurry line and even though when looking through the focuser it looks like the mirrors are roughly aligned I can't get a dot to appear on the target either, after having completely miss-aligned trying to get a red dot I've had no luck and have ended up in a worse position that I started. 

Is this likely to be something up with the collimator or something simple that I'm missing.

Apologies if I've missed a similar post, I couldn't quite come up with the right search for a red blurry line!

This is the collimator that I have: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006FGYWM0?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Thanks for any help in advance

Mark

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Hello and welcome to SGL. The Celestron LCM 114 has a focal length of 1000mm but the tube is much shorter (about 500mm). This means that there is a small correcting lens built into the bottom of the focuser to correct the focal length and also correct spherical aberaations (the primary mirror is also spherical). This type of telescope design is known as a Bird-Jones reflector and they cannot be collimated using a laser collimator. For this type of telescope you will need either a simple collimating cap  http://www.firstlightoptics.com/other-collimation-tools/rigel-aline-collimation-cap.html or a Cheshire collimating eyepiece http://www.firstlightoptics.com/other-collimation-tools/cheshire-collimating-eyepiece.html

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