Collimating rig to remove sensor tilt indoors

[Lead_weight]

I've been meaning to write up the details on my camera sensor tilt rig for some time. Sensor tilt seems to have become a big issue over the years as the hobby has grown and QC issues coupled with mass produced cameras has lead to less than perfect sensor alignment in the cameras.

Along with some folks on Cloudy Nights, and through an example presented by StarlightXpress, we undertook creating a collimation rig, and learned how to collimate our sensors for perfect orthogonality without having to use the stars at night.

It's a very straightforward method, that you can do yourself in a few minutes. It takes collecting some easy to find parts from the hardware store, as well as a few accessories to put together the rig. 

Hope you all enjoy. You can find the full set of instructions at my website as they're too lengthy to detail here.

Before adjustment (This is Caroline's Rose shot with an Esprit 100 and ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro camera before tilt adjustment. Note the tilt in the lower right corner.):

 

After adjustment (This is Caroline's Rose shot with an Esprit 100 and ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro camera after tilt adjustment. Tilt completely removed. CCDInspector results show 1% residual tilt.):

[tooth_dr]

Nicely written up Andrew.  Your rig looks very similar to Daniel Sundström's who shared his video on here, which was then subsequently developed into a simpler rig, that a fair few of us (icluding myself) went out and copied!

Adjust your CCD or CMOS astronomy camera tilt during the day with a laser pen

 

[Lead_weight]

Ah, yes! I'm familiar with Daniel's rig. He showed his progress in the cloudy nights thread that I mentioned. It was really helpful in understanding how to collimate. This is such a great community. So many good ideas.

Fantastic setup by ollypenrice. I saw someone a few years ago make a similar version but used a glass table, and just set the camera on top just like you have. They did have to have a brace very similar to yours to keep the camera in position.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Lead_weight

[Lead_weight]

4 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Nicely written up Andrew.  Your rig looks very similar to Daniel Sundström's who shared his video on here, which was then subsequently developed into a simpler rig, that a fair few of us (icluding myself) went out and copied!

Adjust your CCD or CMOS astronomy camera tilt during the day with a laser pen

After reading through the thread I found it interesting that you all had settled on collimating on the sensor cover slip window reflection. In our tests through the Cloudy Nights thread we ended up collimating on the pixel spot closest to the cover slip and front window reflections. In tests, collimating on the furthest reflection resulted in 20% tilt, cover slip window resulted in 6% tilt, and the pixel nearest resulted in 1% residual tilt confirmed by CCDInspector.