Jump to content

An unsual van den Bergh


afesan

Recommended Posts

vdB 136..an orange-yellow reflection nebula..
 
After a year ..I finally decided to clean the mirrors of the ASA N12 astrograph. Having a remote observatory is a great chance for astrophotography, but the wild forest environment..., dust, insects and pollen... are sure dirty deposits for any telescope mirror.
Time to clean with distilled water and an special cleaning liquid soap... . Here is my mate observatory who helped me:
 
After that, the telescope need a recollimation and this is the first image and test.... I hope you like it:
 

vdB 136,LBN 312 (Cygnus)

 
More resolution,target general information  and acquisition details:
 
 
Thanks for looking.
Enjoy summer
 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi!

Nice image Antonio!

What special cleaning liquid soap did you use? I need to clean in the near future.

And what tools for collimation? I have had problem getting good collimation in one corner of the field, I use the Glatter laser for the secondary mirror and Catseye InfinityX for the primary, placed at the OTA focus plane using 3" extensions rings on the OK3 fokuser. I dont see so much discussion about collimation in the forum, is it not a big issue or is it just me who cant get it perfect ;)

 

Regards,

/Christer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well... the "special" cleaning soap  is a simply liquid dishwasher soap. In Spain is well-known as "Mistol"  and very popular in any supermarket. Many of us clean here our mirrors with this one and distilled water. Just clean carefully your hands with this soap...and wet the mirror with a lo of water.Let the mirror wet for some minutes in order to "loose" the dirty. Then add some drops of liquid soap to the water and clean softly with the yolk fingers and  circular movements ..veryyy softly from the center to the borders. Repeat this operation 2-3 times...FInally clear with al lot of distilled water.Let dry the mirror into vertical position .. This liquid soap leaves no residue of any class and don´t damage the mirrors..

http://www.mistol.es/es/inicio.cky.html

 

Collimation was simply done with a first approximation using a laser collimator from ASA ( BTW: I did not see this laser into ASA products lately)..Then my observatory mate and me did several coliimation approaches with the Telecat and Infinty tools from Catseye  

http://www.catseyecollimation.com/

 

until we were very close to what we consider "perfection". Finally with real stars we made marginal minor  adjusting .. 

Hopes this helps

Antonio

Edited by afesan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have used the procedure recommended by ASA for their RC telescope mirrors. It worked well. You can download the procedure from the ASA website.

 

Before starting I remove loose dut and dirt with a Visible Dust camera sensor brush.

 

I found it is critical to use a 'pure' detergent (ie no perfumes, hand softeners etc) and not too much, otherwise its very difficult to remove all streaking. And to do LOTS of rinses!

 

A spray with superclean (ie no solids) IPA can certainly help remove the rinse water after cleaning, as it breaks down the surface tension. If it is pure it leaves no trace.

 

For collimation, I use the Glatter laser (as supplied by ASA or obtainable direct), and Tublug for initial set-up and checking after travel, and Catseye Infinity for fine tuning.

 

Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...