kniclander

I have found that you need to aim quite a bit lower than you think. not sure why this is but i think it might be due to atmospheric refraction(?). Also, like many things, you get better with practice and you also get to tell how a star of certain brightness will look through your scope.. but as a beginner, I would have been completely lost without a finder so good luck:)

Colimation IS confusing. If you follow my guide to the letter all will be well. Thats why I wrote it to help people.

The confusing refekections are precisiely why my guide has you put some card donw the tube to mask the refelections in the firts stage of collimation.

Its very hard to explain collimation but easy to do. I tried to make it a step by step guide with each process broken down to its component parts.

Most collimation guides show the classic concentric circle pattern which you wont get with a modern newt. The simplified classic concentric view is the thing that most confuses beginners and thats

Recisely why I wrote the guide to take all factors in.

You need to read the guide and take it one step at a time. Your own cllimations is completely out of whack by the way. i would propose go back to firts principles and read either my guide or smeone elses and woek on it.

Dont be tempted to assume a laser will fix all ills, they are one of the biggest causes of beginners asking questions as to why it doesnt work and also a big reason for people having duff collimation. Without a high grade focuser ai would say they are a waste of time.

welcome back:) you have been missed:icon_salut:

try "andy's shot glass" - it is not as thorough as Astro-baby's guide but it'll get you pretty well there and it is much simpler.

shrooms...?

Under our skies yes but I've read so many times on Cloudy nights that they in the USA can get x600 + from their dobs. Their seeing is far superior to ours but you still need to track, unless they have tracking mounts as well.

for me Doc, it's not the seeing that's the issue but the tracking. At 150x an planet moves across the fov in about 2 minutes (I guess ?) and the image isn't that good at the edges anyway so at 600x you'd be moving the scope about every 20 seconds . Unless their dobs are so smoooooooooooooooth that that can keep the object in the middle of the fov all the time without any vibration (I know I can't:icon_confused:) I don't get it:icon_scratch:

ps I think there's quite a lot of bull**it on CN as in my scopes bigger than yours, my scopes good up to 1,000 times etc etc

good post! I completely agree that 200 is about the limit for a dob.

cosmic microwave background radiation (I think)

there endeth my knowledge of radio astronomy

dan