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Baader laser colimator first use


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Hi All

Well after my shin dig over the astro engineering laser, I got hold of Steve at FLO and ordered one of the new version baader laser collimaters. It arrived this morning (as Steve said it would, thanks steve) and I decided to have a play around this afternoon. Firstly, the laser looks and feels like a quality product, stout with just the right weight to make it feel that its there. Due to factory specialist laser collimation, I am not allowed to touch any of the grub screws which have been set for you so to speak.

The instructions are very good indeed, even a newbie laser chuff like me had no problem understanding them and the pictures throughout are excellent. The laser requires that the on/off button be aligned to the set screw on the focuser, not a problem, however, the moontlite I have faces in the wrong direction which would have meant me still having to go to the laser to check alignment. I worked this one away as I use an old barlow tube anyway, so I set the set side to face me when I am at the primary end.

The laser works like any other laser in that it send a beam of light into the scope via the secondary to the primary then hopefully back again into the laser itself. The fit into the eyepiece holder was nice and snug, far better than I had hoped, the laser itself is nice and bright enabling view to be seen quite easily. It has a screw down on/off button.

I firstly lined up my secondary mirror so the lasers red dot sat right in the middle of the doughnut on the primary mirror, took me five mintues, I then used the lasers etched windown to set the primary mirrors angle in relation to the secondary so that the laser would end up coming back through the same hole it left from. Well ease of use was excellent, seeing the laser in position on the viewing area assists no end in lining up the primary and overall my collimation took 15 mintues in total. Of course a star collimation tonight will show me whats good or not, but on first view its done its job well, well enough I hope to firstlight my second hand meade 5000 26mm eyepiece which I also got today.

The baader collimator is the one in this link <url>http://www.firstlightoptics.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=BaaderLaser</url>

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I like mine, and its great to be able to work on the screws at the back of my OTA and be able to see the result on the etched window without having to move!

Yip...I actually missed shouting at the wife last night... :D

They look very well made and come from the factory already collimated.

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There were independent checks carried out by S@N Magazine this month, overall it got a 90% benchmark, the laser drift was something like 2' off true, which they regarded as not bad and anything better would be an actual star test. The laser does allow fine tuning but I wont try that. The off beam check was carried out at 16ft.

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