Just cleaned my mirror.

[Hedgerow]

Hi,

Since my Goto mount is currently in for repair, I thought I'd take the opportunity to check out the scope. After 4 years without so much as collimation ( I have only had it about 5 months but I know the previous owner never did it.) the mirror was very dusty, with quite a few larger bits clinging to it. It is a Celestron 6" Newtonian.

Reading up on various articles on the web, they put the fear of God in me but, possibly foolishly, I decided to clean the mirror. The Celestron handbook gives no instruction on mirror removal so I just undid the screws that looked like they were holding the mirror assembly in and went on from there. I'd already acquired a jet blower, some washing up liquid without colouring, aromas, etc. some pure cotton wool and loads of distilled water.

It turned out to be very straight forward, no problems and I now have a mirror that looks a whole lot better. I just need to collimate it now but I'll wait until I get my mount back to support the OTA for that task.

So it is not scary and not difficult. Preparation and care are key to success.

Cheers

Peter

[John]

As long as you were very gentle it should be fine. I believe the technique is just to use the weight of the wet cotton wool, use new cotton wool after each "pass" and not to use a circular "scrubbing" motion.

[Hedgerow]

John,

Yes you are totally correct...exactly how I did it, discarding the cotton wool after each pass using only a feather touch at most. It did the job!

Peter