First Light Aftermath: Balancing Dob, Potential Collimation and setting up the RACI finder correctly!

[KingsAmis]

So I took my 8” StellaLyra out for first light last night and it’s was really damn cool I was able to see the moon in such clear and crisp quality using them Rigel cap I think it was collimated well-almost perfect out of the box which was nice. 
 

However a big issue arrived almost immediately with the balancing of the dob I don’t think I did it correctly. It would stayed locked onto the moon at times with it falling out of position as soon as I let go of the tube even with the adjustment bearings at their tightest. So my first question is how do I go about balancing the dob and how do I know when it’s completely balanced?

 

Secondly, the RACI finder is great but it’s not aligned I found the moon with trouble and it was borderline luck that I found it via the 8mm considering my tube would drop every time it locked on. How does one align correctly?

Finally I I saw Jupiter and it was beautiful, I found it through great and I mean great trouble using my 8mm the tube would drop each time I had to switch out my 30mm to 8mm eventually since it was directly a voice the moon I aligned my way there manually which took 20 minutes but when I saw it it was beautiful I think I saw 2 and maybe 3 Galilean moons which was really cool I will never forget that moment ever. However, details on Jupiter were quite hard to make out in all fairness I was using a moon filter at the time instead of the 80.a I have lying about but it was dark. That being said when I first managed to lock on to Jupiter I it was a bright white light after the scope stopped shaking I could resolve some details but not much colour it was very white. now that begs the question was I just using the wrong filter or was the scope not correctly collimated? 
 

Any help on this topic is welcome! Kind regards!

Below are photos of the moon and Jupiter.

 

[starhiker]

I got the same dob a few weeks ago. It is brilliant. I have no problem to observe moon and jupiter with both the 30mm and 9mm eyepiece. I am not sure why you have trouble viewing jupiter. But for the first two questions, I may provide some of my experience.

I experienced that the tube dropped its head before when the angle is low. I simply fixed the bearing on the highest position of the tube, that is making sure the bottom is slightly heavier. All screws inside and the bearing are tightened to their maximum. I have no problem for the tube loosing its balance after that.

The second problem is definitely that you didn't align the focuser properly. It is an easy fix. Just aim your dob far in the daytime, and adjust the two screws of the finder to align it to the center of the finder.

Nice pictures btw. I had not made success to take a good picture through the eyepiece. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by starhiker

[KingsAmis]

31 minutes ago, starhiker said:

I got the same dob a few weeks ago. It is brilliant. I have no problem to observe moon and jupiter with both the 30mm and 9mm eyepiece. I am not sure why you have trouble viewing jupiter. But for the first two questions, I may provide some of my experience.

I experienced that the tube dropped its head before when the angle is low. I simply fixed the bearing on the highest position of the tube, that is making sure the bottom is slightly heavier. All screws inside and the bearing are tightened to their maximum. I have no problem for the tube loosing its balance after that.

The second problem is definitely that you didn't align the focuser properly. It is an easy fix. Just aim your dob far in the daytime, and adjust the two screws of the finder to align it to the center of the finder.

Nice pictures btw. I had not made success to take a good picture through the eyepiece. 

Yeah taking pictures is a pain! But I really liked the outcome. I’ll try those fixes maybe I just go to take a better look into collimating it. 

[wulfrun]

To align the finder, you can use a distant object in the daytime. Find a TV aerial etc, get it centred in your highest power EP, then twiddle the RACI's adjusters until it's centred on the same thing. You can also align at night using Polaris (it doesn’t move much), assuming you have sight of it. Personally, I use Polaris and check the RACI as a first step each time I set up. I find removing and re-fitting it loses the setting enough to be annoying, yours may not have that issue