the good thing about clouds...

[Galactosa]

...well maybe not for the more experienced amateur astronomers on here but for the newbies like myself.

My Orion XT8 arrived a few weeks ago but had not been feeling the love and the mirrors had been bumped out of place. I watched a collimation video online but found it difficult to do at first and ended up getting frustrated I even phoned a telescope shop in Edinburgh and was going to pay £35 for someone to do it for me!

Although the views I got were still great, the view from the finder scope and looking through the eyepiece didn't match and were off by quite a bit. The good news is that the cloudy skies have allowed me time to learn about collimation and a little about how the telescope works in general.

I want to know, will the collimation improve the views I get, or will it just make it a bit easier to locate the various objects in the sky?

[Catweazel]

Hi. Collimation will make some difference, but unless your scope is out by a mile, I wouldn't worry too much. To get the eyepiece to match what is in the finderscope, you can adjust the finderscope with the 2 screws that are on it until it matches up with the view in the eyepiece.

[Mr Q]

This site will hopefully answer your questions on collimationhttp://w1.411.telia.com/~u41105032/kolli/kolli.html

This video is the simplest one I've seen on how to collimate a reflectorCollimating a Newtonian

To see IF the scope needs collimation, do a simple star test as described at the link hereThierry Legault - The collimation

[Daniel-K]

clouds = new stuff = empty wallet!