ant it.

Because the sweet spot can be very small, this is by far the most critical part of
collimation. Have a look at your telescope and make sure you know where these
adjustment screws are and how they work.

Accurately placing the primary mirror's center dot is an important precursor to

accurate collimation. The dot (black electrical tape) is temporarily affixed to the
underside of a pair of flexible, transparent rulers mated at right angles to one another.
Once the rulers are correctly positioned (with the dot equidistant from the mirror's
edge in all four directions), bend them down to attach the tape spot to the mirror.
S&T / Craig Michael Utter
To make collimation easy, the center of the mirror should be marked in some way. I
recommend marking it with a piece of electrician's tape. Don't make it too small — a
½-inch-diameter (or even slightly larger) spot works well. As long as it is smaller than
your diagonal mirror, it will not affect your telescope's performance. If you plan to
use a laser collimator, make a hole in the center of your spot. (Another approach is to
use an adhesive binder reinforcement ring, the kind used by generations of school
children to keep their homework from flying out of their 3-ring binders.)

The secondary mirror. This is a small, flat mirror that serves to move the image
formed by the primary to the side of the tube, where it is viewed with an eyepiece. To
minimize harmful diffraction effects, the secondary, or diagonal, mirror is generally
only large enough to let the central portion of the focal plane receive light from the
whole primary mirror. You should center this fully illuminated area in the eyepiece by
positioning the secondary in the correct location.

The secondary is attached to an adjustable holder suspended on a spider — often a

cross made from thin sheet metal. Identify the adjustment screws for the secondary
holder and the spider.

The eyepiece.
One of the first steps in collimating your reflector is to identify the various
components as seen from the focuser. Owing to the multiple reflections, this can seem
harder than it really is.
Sky & Telescope illustration
The third optical component in the telescope system is the eyepiece. It is a complex
magnifying lens used to view the image formed at the focal plane. Like the primary
mirror, the eyepiece has an optical axis, and this axis should be aimed at the center of
the main mirror for best performance — though in practice it is the center axis of the
focuser drawtube that you aim at the primary mirror.

A good eyepiece will render a sharp image in the central parts of the field of view (its
sweet spot), but toward the edge not even the best and most expensive eyepieces can
produce a perfect image. For this reason it is important to make sure that the sweet
spots of the primary mirror and the eyepiece match up — the ultimate goal of
collimation.

Now that you know what you're dealing with, look into the empty focuser and try to
identify the optical parts just described. This is best done during daylight, with the
telescope aimed at the ceiling or the sky (be careful to avoid the Sun). The illustration
to the right shows what you should see: the secondary mirror in its holder, its elliptical
face tilted 45° and appearing circular. With your eye close to the focuser, you can see
the primary mirror reflected in the secondary, and the secondary and its spider in turn
reflected in the primary. Finally, inside this reflection of the secondary, you can see
the focuser drawtube and your eye.

Three Steps to Collimation

While looking through your collimating eyepiece down your Newtonian reflector's
focuser tube, follow these three steps to collimate your reflector. The steps are simple
in principle. However, depending on how your telescope is built, you may require a
great deal of dexterity — or a partner (especially if your telescope is large) — to
manipulate your optics; collimation adjustments are much more easily made with
some instruments than others.
S&T illustration
Once you are acquainted with the telescope's optical parts and what they look like in
the focuser, you're ready to proceed. To get your telescope well collimated, here is
what you need to accomplish:
 Step 1: Center the secondary mirror on the axis of the focuser drawtube.
 Step 2: Aim the eyepiece at the center of the primary mirror.
 Step 3: Center your primary mirror's sweet spot in the eyepiece's field of view.

In most cases, only the last of these three steps will need to be repeated regularly; the
first two are more or less set-and-forget operations. Now let's get to the nuts and bolts
of actually collimating your reflector.

Step 1:
Positioning the secondary mirror can be made much easier if a piece of cardboard is
placed between it and the primary mirror. This eliminates the confusing reflections
coming from the primary mirror.
S&T / Craig Michael Utter
Begin by making sure that the focuser and the secondary are lined up. The simplest
and best tool for this step is a sight tube. (Read our sidebar for more on this
collimation tool and others.) You slide it into the focuser, as you would an eyepiece,
and look through the tube's peephole at the secondary. (If the secondary is far out of
adjustment, you should first tilt and/or rotate it to get the reflection of the spot on the
primary roughly centered in the sight tube before you proceed.) It may be difficult to
distinguish the edge of the secondary from the reflected edge of the main mirror, so
place a piece of white cardboard between the secondary mirror and the primary, as
shown here.

The elliptical secondary should appear round and well centered in the circular opening
of the sight tube. If it is, Step 1 is done. If not, either the secondary holder or the
focuser (or both) needs attention.

Try adjusting the secondary holder first. You can usually move it toward or away
from the primary by adjusting the center bolt that joins the holder to the spider.

If the error is toward either side of the sight tube (90° to the optical axis), also check
to find out if the secondary is well centered in the telescope tube. If it isn't, adjust the
spider's mounting screws until it is. If this checks out fine, then tilt the focuser by
putting shims under its mounting plate.

Step 2: Here you adjust the tilt of the secondary mirror to aim the focuser's axis at the
center of the primary. First, remove the cardboard from the spider. Now, while
viewing through the sight tube, carefully adjust the screws that tilt and rotate the
secondary until the primary mirror's reflection appears centered in your field of view.
If your sight tube has cross hairs, align the primary's center spot with them; otherwise,
center the outer edge of the primary within the sight tube. (Make sure that the sight
tube is racked in far enough to let you see the whole primary mirror.) A laser
collimator is even better for this step — just center the laser beam on the primary's
center spot.
Described in Sky & Telescope's December 2001 issue, Gary Seronik's 8-inch
travelscope features several innovations, among them a wooden secondary-mirror
support that allows the secondary mirror's collimation to be easily adjusted by hand,
without the tiny, hard-to-manipulate screws common to commercial units.
S&T / Craig Michael Utter

A small error in secondary alignment is usually not a problem. As long as the pointing
error is no more than 1 or 2 percent of the main mirror's diameter, it makes no visible
difference. However, if you plan to use a laser collimator in Step 3, you should be
aware that even a tiny misadjustment here will throw off the final collimation.

If you have a truss-tube telescope, you will need to repeat Step 2 each time you
reassemble the scope. With a solid-tube reflector, you need only check this once in a
while.

Step 3: In this, the final and most critical step, you need to tilt the main mirror to
center its sweet spot (and its optical axis) in the focuser. This procedure should be
done at the beginning of each observing session and checked occasionally during the
night, since temperature changes or routine handling may cause your telescope's
components to shift enough to change collimation.

The best tool for this procedure is a Cheshire eyepiece. Put it in the focuser and
observe the reflection of its shiny 45°-angle face in the primary. By turning the
primary's adjustment screws you can move this reflection until it appears centered on
the primary mirror's center spot. If you can make these adjustments while looking in
the Cheshire, so much the better; otherwise an assistant can be very helpful. Most
mirror cells have three adjustment screws or three pairs of push-pull adjustments. For
simplicity's sake, I recommend using only two of the adjustments — the third one
(which might as well be the one that is hardest to reach) can be left alone unless you
run out of adjustment on one of the others.
When Step 3 is done, the optical axis is accurately centered in the focuser, and
collimation is complete. However, if you look carefully you will notice that the
Cheshire eyepiece does not appear exactly centered inside the shadow of the
secondary. Don't worry; this is in fact how things should look because the secondary
mirror is slightly offset. (For more on the subject of secondary offsets, go to this
sidebar. But bear in mind that you needn't master the somewhat elliptical reasoning
behind the subject in order to collimate your telescope well!)

A laser collimator is often used for Step 3, by centering the returning beam on the
laser's faceplate. However, this method has problems that belie the laser's presumed
accuracy. Why? Suppose that in Step 2 the laser beam has missed the true center of
the primary mirror by a small distance, for example, 2 mm. Even if the primary mirror
happens to be exactly collimated (its center precisely aligned with the center of the
eyepiece), the returning laser beam will be parallel to the main mirror's axis but will
miss the center of the laser faceplate by 2 mm. If you then tilt the main mirror to
center the beam returning to the laser, the collimation will be 1 mm off!
Unintentionally, you will have caused a miscollimation great enough to affect the
performance of a short-focal-length telescope. This extreme sensitivity to a small and
otherwise unimportant error in Step 2 is the Achilles' heel of the laser collimator. So
even if you use one for rough alignment in Step 3, it is better to use a Cheshire
eyepiece for the final adjustment.

Star-Testing Your Collimation

Is your telescope only slightly out of collimation? An out-of-focus star is all that is
needed to fine-tune collimation. If the shadow of the secondary mirror is slightly
offset (left), the scope could use adjustment. Find the location of the collimated field
— the part of the focal plane where the out-of-focus star is symmetric — and adjust
the primary mirror's collimation to bring the collimated field into the center of your
eyepiece's field of view.
Sky & Telescope
Once your telescope has cooled down and is well collimated, it should be ready to
perform at its best. At high magnification (25× to 50× per inch of aperture, or 1× to
2× per mm of aperture) and in good seeing conditions, stars at focus should appear in
the eyepiece as tight, symmetric diffraction disks. However, if stars at the center of
the field show the telltale asymmetry of coma, double-check your collimation with the
Cheshire eyepiece. If the center spot still looks centered, then it isn't located at the
primary's true optical center.

NNils Olaf Carlin

If this is the case with your mirror's center spot, ignore it for now and try tweaking the
primary's collimation, in small steps, until you have centered the best image in the
field of view. (This method was described in detail in the June 2001 issue of Sky &
Telescope, page 125, and is illustrated below.) The Cheshire will now indicate the
location of the primary mirror's true optical center. If necessary, move the spot to the
correct position or put another, larger piece of tape on top of it.

If you know that your primary mirror spot is okay (and in most cases it will be, if
carefully centered), there is no need to routinely fine-tune your collimation with a star
test — the Cheshire eyepiece is not only easier to use, but it is more accurate if the
seeing is less than ideal, which it is most nights.

Now your telescope is in perfect tune, and the improvement in performance should be
obvious. If not, try to deliberately miscollimate the primary, and see what it does to a
high-magnification view of a planet. After this demonstration, you'll never let your
scope go out of collimation again.

S&T illustration
The secondary-mirror offset is no doubt the most misunderstood aspect of
collimation. Luckily you don't need to understand it to collimate your instrument, but
given the level of discussion the subject generates, it's worth delving into.

If you place the secondary centered in the telescope tube, with the primary mirror's
optical axis at the center of the diagonal mirror's elliptic face, diagram A (greatly
exaggerated for clarity) shows what will happen. The shaded area shows where light
from the whole primary can be seen reflected in the secondary — at the focal plane,
this defines the fully illuminated field. Inside it, you catch light from the whole
mirror; outside of it, some light is lost. You would want the fully illuminated field to
be centered in the eyepiece, but as you see here, it isn't — it is shifted away from the
primary. This situation is known as nonoffset collimation. Although this condition
doesn't cause any great problems, it is easily avoided.
In diagram B, the offset is achieved by sliding the secondary away from the focuser
and toward the primary. Now the fully illuminated field is centered in the eyepiece,
but the secondary is no longer centered in the telescope tube. This is known as fully
offset collimation.

But what if you want the fully illuminated field centered in the eyepiece, but must
leave the secondary mirror centered in the telescope tube? It can be done, as shown in
diagram C, by slightly adjusting the tilt of both mirrors. Now the optical axis is
slightly tilted within the telescope tube. In practice, this is not a problem because the
tilt is never more than a small fraction of a degree. Since the secondary is offset down
the tube, this is known as partially offset collimation. It is no doubt the most common
situation, even among telescope owners who may not even realize that their scope's
secondary is offset at all.

If you use a sight tube to center the secondary as described in Step 1, you have
automatically offset the secondary toward the primary mirror, thus ensuring that the
fully illuminated field is centered. (When using the sight tube, you make the near and
far edges of the secondary appear to have the same angular size. This means that the
distance from the far edge of the secondary to the optical axis is greater than from the
near edge to the axis. This constitutes an offset.) Both partial and full offset conditions
give good collimation.

If you want to calculate the offset, use this simple formula:

Offset = (secondary size)/(4*focal ratio).

This is how much the secondary is offset toward the primary mirror and also