Freaking out on collimation

If I could only center spot the secondary!!! The article in S&T is still bugging me, just played with my scope and a film canister for 45 minutes, I have so much trouble trying to tell if I have the secondary centered perfect under the focuser! Wondering if I should get a chesire/peepsite/crosshairs eyepiece? I have a laser, but it said lasers can be untrustable for the collimation of the primary IF the secondary isn't centered perfect. Ahhhh any suggestions? Thanks! Ron

Yeah, don't panic. :-)

A cheshire is worth having. Get one. But for the moment if I were you I would

1) Satisfy myself that the secondary was placed approximately correctly underneath the focuser, centered (or correctly offset) in the tube, and NOT rotated away from the focuser. (Rotation of secondary is heap big problem for single beam laser.)

2) Use the laser to align the secondary.

3) Use the laser to align the primary.

4) Check collimation visually. Looks good? Use it. Tweak the primary in on a star if you want to get it better. Looks whacked? Check to see if the secondary is rotated. In any case, readjust the secondary somehow and repeat.

While this procedure can not be proven to terminate, it has always worked within a few iterations for me.
--
Mike

I have center-spotted my secondary, but I'm not sure it helps that much. I find I sometimes need to do a course centering of the secondary without the cheshire - just stand back a ways to look at it.

Charlie