My first (adult) telescope was a Celestron
EQ 130 Newtonian. I owned it for five years and always found collimation challenging, to say the least. This past winter, I finally bought an Orion collimating eyepiece and after two tries - when the secondary swung free - I gave up and donated the telescope (and the collimator) to the Goodwill. I have been a die-hard fan of refractors ever since.
However, I fell for a pretty face: an 8-inch Bresser Newtonian, factory reconditioned, a svelte 10 kg, and only 45% of retail. Then, reading more, I found out that this
f/3.9 "photographic Newtonian" will be somewhat more challenging to collimate. So,while I subscribe to Dirty Harry's mandate that a man must always know his limitations, I also follow the path of Richard Feynman who with a mere 124 IQ (within striking distance for me) figured that you could learn anything you put your mind to.
So, I shopped around. I was impressed with the fact that Celestron puts its collimator user manual online as a PDF, whereas my first choice said that they do not provide instructions, but you can find them online. Celestron did not have much else for sale right now. However, I did find what I wanted at Agena. I bought the Celestron as a nod to their customer service and I also bought some other tools.
And I also bought a book (recommended by Lady Fraktor). I got it from AbeBooks (avoiding Amazon whenever I can) and their partner for this was "World of Books, Inc." The copy is very nice, hardly used at all and was $65 more or less with tax and shipping.
And I came to The Sky Searchers and performed a directed search for just the topic name. Interesting and not surprising, all of the topics were here in Beginners and none was in Reflectors. I read it all, printing just about all of them to PDFs for my /Directory/Astronomy/Optics/Collimating
The topic threads included several great recommendations. Astro Baby's Guide is well-known. Gary Seronik is a guru. Donald E. Pensack is also highly regarded.
This is my library so far:
And speaking of libraries, my city library has been a good resource, as always. I borrowed this:
It has a chapter on collimation (of course) and other good advice. I note that it is a Cambridge University Press book.
Meanwhile...
I am still shopping for a tripod and mount for using the telescope. But the Explore Twilight rated at 17lbs will hold the 22 lbs while I work. I am not in a hurry on this. The tools have not arrived yet and I have some serious commitments for writing on my desk. (I am documenting lasers and other factory systems for our community college here and I volunteered to contribute an article to the upcoming 3rd edition of Springer's
Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers.) And I can wait to find the tripod and mount because the Bresser 8-inch 208mm photographic Newtonian reflector telescope is back in its cartons and crate. That all being as it may... The game will start on the whistle...
still find this video as good as any for collimation .
