Cleaning my scope, it's cloudy, so nothing else to do with it!

[CKemu]

The last time I was able to use my scope was roughly May 2nd, which is rather frustrating!

So guess I should learn how to clean my scope, a duster is one thing for the body, but my lens has water marks and a mildly sticky layer of dust attached to it due to rain, pollen and city pollution.

My scope is the Meade LX90 - ACF/UHTC 8" SCT. The manual suggests that I don't use the same diluted alcohol/water combination I use on my Nikon coated lens's - so any owners out there that have this scope and have cleaned it? I don't fancy destroying the coatings

[John]

The corrector plate can be cleaned using the Baader Wonder Fluid and their micro-fibre cloth. I use this on my eyepieces, refractor objective lenses and the corrector plate on my maksutov-newtonian. It's excellent and I would not trust anything else on them.

I know it's a bit more expense (£15) but why take the risk of £100's worth of damage ?.

[stolenfeather]

Interesting post! I was just wondering what I could use to clean my scope as well.

Isabelle

[ollypenrice]

One piece of advice I read a while back was that cleaning you corrector plate should be viewed in a similar manner to taking out you car engine. Don't do it on a weekly basis!

However, optical cleaning fluid and a proper optical cloth using curved motions and no pressure won't do any harm. Don't use the same bit of the cloth twice. Curved motions mean that any scratch inflicted will not show like a straight line, just as curved spiders don't show diffraction spikes.

In general though, too much cleaning is a beginner's mistake.

Olly