First ever mirror clean

[mdstuart]

Yes, I have done it, washed my mirror with cotton wool under water etc....

Here is the finished product, no dust but the flash shows up the imperfections of my 9 year old mirror....

Still much shinier than before, should have taken a before picture....

(click to enlarge)

[John]

Nice job !

Is that a 6" F/5 TAL mirror ? - I thought the 6" TAL newts were all F/8 ?

I had a F/8 6" TAL for a while and the mirror was in much worse nick than yours - still performed very well though

John

[SteelRat]

They do a short one too John;

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/proddetail.php?prod=tal150p

[mdstuart]

It is an F5 and I can see more stars now than on carte du ciel! about another 0.5mag than the 5.1 inch I had before so performance is great despite marks

[markarian]

Looks like your mirror clean has turned out better than mine :crybaby:

I have a 14 year old 10" mirror (an old Hinds 'A' one) which was seriously dirty but the surface was intact. I cleaned it with water and cotton wool and it looked and worked fine for about a month. Since then it has become covered in spots and now obviously needs recoated. It works OK but obviously not to its full potential.

Anyone have a recommendation where to get it recoated?

Thanks

Mark

[barkis]

Those black spots may be misleading. Depending upon the thickness of the original coating, you may be seeing holes in it. If you have the mirror out, hold it up to the sky, or bright light, and you may see myriads of holes in the coating. Maybe, not definitely.

Re coating. Oldham Optical, Vacuum Coatings, Galvoptics. Do a Google search for their addresses.

Ron.

[markarian]

I'm pretty sure the coating is off in those patches now. Re-coating is the only way.

Thanks for the names. Never had to do it before.

Mark

[supernova]

OMG when I looked first at your pic I thought the gap between the doors was a crack :shock:

Wot a silly billy :oops:

Nice clean up :salute:

Bernie.