phoobar

If its any consolation at all I almost tore my hair out when doing collimation for the first time - years back all most of us had was a collimation cap and for the scopes back then with long focal lengths it was adequate.  A cheshire tool makes life simpler (note most modern Cheshires are in fact combination sight and cheshire tools).

Lasers in my opinion cause beginners more problems than they solve - its perfectly possible to get a good laser response when in fact the mirror are not aligned.  Solid lasers like the Hotech or the Blug are a lot better in this regard but also a lot more expensive (I have never used a blug but some people who know about collimation swear they are the bomb).

A handy tool to have with you as well is a short tube refractor collimator - they are useful for quick field collimation of the primary mirror and can also be useful on some large and fast reflectors as they give a wider view down the tube.  Some combi/schesire tools have too long a sight tube which makes them cranky at times to use with modern fast reflectors.

Half the problem with collimation, especially of the secondary, is the confusing reflections hence the paper stuffed down the tube.

I am currently revising my own collimation guide to include alignment of the focuser to ensure its square.  I originally quite intentionally left this out as it seemed to make the process even harder and more daunting for the beginner but quite a few people have asked me to include it.

Writing a collimation guide is no easy task - if you make it too simple people get bad collimation, if you make it thorough people complain its complicated  I tried to capture all of the major issues and cover them step at a time in a logical manner with drawings and pctures to help the beginner get a view of what things should look like.  I would earnestly encourage anyone with time on their hands to write a guide of their own because a) you will learn stuff yourself and you may just make a guide thats useful to others - there can't be enough resources for this kind of thing.

The funny thing with collimation is that once you have got your head round it you kind of wonder why it ever seemed so hard before.  It is a very confusing thing as I am sure most of you would agree.

If you want a really comprehensive guide that covers everything (but at the risk of your head exploding ) I can recommend Vic Menards 'New Perspectives on Newtonian Collimation'  Jason Khadder who did the illustrations for that learned tome was kind enough to review my guide and peer review to make sure its all accurate as well as to graciously allow me to use some of his drawings/schematics.  That reminds me I must get another copy - mine got lost in a recent move.

Mel

Hi Astro Baby

For what its worth I found the hardest thing to judge right is getting the secondary mirror square to the focuser by rotating it.

collimating just using a collimation cap