First light with the Sharpstar 130 HNT! Only about an hour on this target, but this was mostly a feel out session. I've had this scope for a few months and have now only had the chance to get it fully dialed in. Plenty went wrong in trying to get this thing working, and most of it had to do with this being my first newtonian.
The issues presented I thought might be related to tilt/backspacing/focuser sag/backlash/flexure/poor guiding, but was really due to slight movement of the primary mirror in the cell due to insufficient lateral support. I would get great collimation and tilt readings at the home position, but would lose those results after slewing. There wasn't much obvious about the mirror that I could diagnose early on. I read on forums about the mirror being loose to the point where some heard clunks. While that wasn't my case, the slight movement that I did have was definitely enough to be a problem. I addressed this last night by removing the mirror and adding more felt to one side of the mirror clips, so that the mirror was centered and not moving. After, I was able to get reliable readings in CCDI/ASTAP/NINA, which allowed me address other imperfections in the system. There's still a small amount of tilt (less than 10%), in the upper right corner, but was cleaned up with BlurXT. When the rain clears, I'd like to address that in my system so that I don't have to rely on BlurXT.
After having tried to isolate all of the previously mentioned issues down to the primary, I DEFINITELY learned this scope inside out. Collimation wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and have been getting repeatable results. Looking forward to putting this scope to work! Thanks to all helping me get up to speed on how newts operate (
@silversilk@Mike Hamende Andy, Reg)
oh, i still haven't retired the RASA! :-)
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