false star

It worked! I made a false star to help with telescope collimation.

I put the big telescope on my desk in the office. I put a small 1-inch shiny ball Christmas decoration in the kitchen. They were about 28 feet apart.

I put a white LED flashlight in the hallway, half-way between the two, aimed at the ball.

Had to really rack in the focus...

I found that the collimation of the 8" SCT was pretty good! But I tweaked it. One screw only. About 16th of a turn. Ha!

This gave me a good opportunity to review the process and refamiliarise myself with the steps for a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope. In preparation for helping Manuel. I made a note to let him know the good news. We could do collimation any time now! Didn't matter the weather conditions...

I found Thierry Legault's collimation notes most useful.