Secondary Mirror Collimation Notes

The Secondary Mirror should be collimated to achieve proper alignment with the telescope tube before attempting to collimate the Primary Mirror.

This section assumes you have already read the Secondary Mirror collimation process in the XT Instruction Manual, and offers my thoughts on the actual procedure.

Click here for Secondary Mirror Collimation Notes.

 

Primary Mirror Collimation Notes

My Primary Mirror collimation notes can be found here:

How to collimate newtonian primary mirrors using the Barlowed Laser method

 

 

 

 

Useful Links

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• Andy's Shot Glass - Collimation Videos - Excellent, well presented website by Andy Raiford providing information for hobbyists on a budget. This link goes to his Collimation videos for Newtonian Reflectors.
  
  
• Observations on Newtonian telescope collimation - Newtonian collimation with lasers and using barlows in the Barlowed Laser Technique.
  
  
• Kendrick Astro Instruments - Laser Collimators - While this is a sales page for Kendrick Astro, it displays several types of Laser Collimators, and the Q&A section at the bottom of the page provides some very useful information.
  
  
• Skywatcher Telescope Star Testing Techniques - This page provides excellent graphics showing what a star test should look like, including errors such as poor collimation, abberation, coma, atmospheric turbulence, tube currents, pinched optics, astigmatism, zonal errors and surface roughness!