Telescope Reviews: SCT collimation, it matters every time...

I am reposting this from beginner forums. I think our fellow SCT users can benefit from it.

I had the best night I have had this entire year viewing jupiter, and I felt it was proper to share it so others can hear what I did to maximize the potential of my SCT telescope.

As my clear sky predicted, tonight was immaculate seeing transparency, and 0 cloud cover here in central new jersey. Tonight was perhaps the best seeing I have had the entire summer.

First thing i did was a quick star test, this is something I do every single time i observe in the beginning. I strongly believe that EVERY SCT user should be collimating their scopes every single observing session prior to observing. I haven't been great at collimation for very long but the difference between acceptable collimation and PERFECT collimation means the difference between using your SCT at 80% capacity and 100% capacity. I work extremely hard at making sure that my collimation is as perfect as it can possibly me. When I was a newbie, I foolishly thought that my collimation was fine the way it was even though the diffraction pattern wasn't perfect. Boy how wrong I was. The things I saw tonight confirm everything every single informed person on this website and many others have shared with the community.

Lets get back to how amazing the conditions were tonight. It never really got to me how important seeing conditions are. I guess when you spend a long time in average seeing, the one night when you get above average is really something special. Basically up until tonight for the past 2 months or more I have not seen a CLEAN star point with diffraction pattern. Most times the star itself would have lines running around it, looking like an atom spinning or something. Classically defined bad seeing conditions? Check. Sometimes the fact that the defocused star rings move around so much, its really hard to see if the scope is indeed in perfect collimation.

When a star was defocused during average seeing I would see the edges of the circles flying all over the place. It was very hard to determine if the circular rings in between the central dot and outside ring were concentric. Tonight, i could have sworn I was looking at a still picture.

No exaggeration whatsoever, my defocused star looked like the pictures:
http://legault.club.fr/collim.html

Perfect, perfect thin little rings going from the central dot out to the bright outer ring. I felt a super shot of adrenaline. Defocused on Vega, Arcturus and Altair to check collimation I suggest to everyone here to use these 3 stars if you live in the north east, or anywhere in our region of the world. Vega is blue colored and is the brightest, showing more obvious defocused rings and diffraction patterns. Altair, is a lesser blue star showing a good amount of focus as well. Here is where we switch, and sometimes I do Arcturus in between the two blue stars. Arcturus is a red giant, when you defocus it the star ring with central dot and focus rings will be RED instead of blue. This is a great way to check your collimation since you have 3 very low magnitude stars, very bright, and they vary in color so its easier to tell where the dot is. My suggestion for perfect collimation is slowly focus and defocus the star, and look to see where the ring closes up. If your ring closes EXACTLY on top of the central dot, you got it made, and your scope is like mine. However, if your ring closes a little to the right or left or higher or lower than the central dot, you need to do a little adjusting. Follow that principle, and i guarantee your collimation will be dead on.

But wait...that wasn't even why this night was so great!

I got my goto alignment done in under 60 seconds, on my lx90 as usual...and after checking out some DSOs (which looked GREAT without a filter by the way). The dumbbell nebula really did look like a more defined Fuzz instead of a dim fuzz. And the ring nebula? Easy target during such pristine conditions, at 160x or 200x i saw the ring perfectly without a filter...and all this in central new jersey! a RED zone of light pollution. Also, located only under 10 miles from a white zone of light pollution.

And finally the big shocker of the night! I told the goto to slew to jupiter...what i saw at around 1030pm-1am almost made me fall off my chair.

Here is what i used:
Zhummel 12.5mm super plossl (160x on my scope)
Baader hyperion 8mm (250x) <---conditions allowed no more than this magnification.
Zhummel polarizing filter

Jupiter was more detailed than it was all summer! Forget the fact that it is so low in the sky, that factor alone kill the image resolution; but for once, the yellow blob was not moving around! It was perfectly still.

I saw 6 bands total, but I was in for a real treat. Unaware, I was observing on a night where the Great Red spot was showing, AND one of Jupiter's moons was doing a transit over the planet!!

There was a very very defined, dark black circle on the upper part of jupiter. At the SAME TIME, contained inside the two smaller, lower brown bands (under the large equatorial brown belt) was the yellow colored blob, that so closely resembled the great red spot!! I haven't seen this baby in so long! Ive seen a moon shadow transit, but to see it when conditions are so clear...and to have both GRS and moon shadow on the planet at once...it was just an unbelievable sight. I never thought that my 8" Meade SCT would surprise me in so many ways, years after getting it.

I was wondering though...why does the great red spot look yellow through the telescope? Its color resembles the rest of the planet. I can clearly see the small brown belts surrounding its outer area.

Why does jupiter look a bit different color wise through our telescopes than it does in pictures? In the pics i see that the GRS is red not yellow. All the brown bands were still brown in my telescope. Even the two thin bands that surround the GRS itself were brown. It gave the yellow GRS a brown outline, making it very easy to see.

I cant stress enough how perfect collimation is important to getting everything out of your SCT. Trust me, its not easy when you first start out, and it looks overwhelming but its a lot easier when it snaps together in your mind. SCTs have probably the easiest collimation of all telescopes, i cannot understand why anyone would be afraid to tune them. I don't even have bobs knobs, i actually trust my hands to be steady enough to not drop the allen wrench onto the corrector plate. I have collimated over 20 times now, not a single scratch, drop, or mistake. Its all about focus and concentration, don't let your mind wander.

Everything "Uncle" Rod Mollise <-- awesome guy says in,
http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1847
about collimation and peoples fears about it are true. I thought the same thing when I heard SCT owners saying they haven't collimated in years...what about the poor dobsonian and reflector owners?

Don't do a half aced job, if you spend good money on a telescope, might as well get the most out of it. A telescope itself is an instrument and a tool so it must be used and understood fully. Not collimating to perfection is like putting regular 87 octane gas into a Ferrari. Don't do it!

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Meade 8.25"(209.55mm) LX-90 EMC (SCT)

Albert Einstein =>
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”