Providing the best bang for your dollar of any telescope design, Newtonian Reflectors are incredibly versatile telescopes and can provide backyard astronomers with jaw dropping views of the night sky. However, with any positive there is usually a negative. Newtonians can require frequent tune ups to perform at their best. A simple Cheshire, Site Tube, or Autocollimator can help you to accomplish this task quickly and easily with just a little practice and patience.
Subtotal:
All coupons, tax, shipping, store credit and gift cards will be applied during checkout.
For example, the Astro Systems Lite Pipe / Site Tube Combo tool can help you not only to properly adjust your telescope’s primary mirror, but just as importantly, the secondary mirror as well. For the least vignetting, especially essential for imaging purposes, the secondary mirror needs to be properly centered under your telescope’s focuser and then adjusted in such a way so that all the light from the primary mirror can reach your eyepiece or camera sensor.
Once your telescope’s optics are properly collimated with one of these useful accessories, it is usually a good idea to bring the scope outside and do a final tweak on a star image at high power. This is not always a convenient thing as the seeing conditions can often make the star bubble and boil, making precise collimation difficult. The AstroZap Artificial Star can be used to combat this issue, allowing you to check the optics of not only your Newtonian, but just about any telescope using a simple star test!
Regardless of which tool you choose to perform this vital step, we highly recommend that you push through the small learning curve and learn the proper adjustments needed to fine tune your own telescope. You will most certainly be glad that you did!
