Bad alignment of just old eyeballs?

i bought a gently used CPC925 and the dealer said he checked it all out prior to shipping some 800 miles. Packaging was excellent and the scope arrived in the original boxes.

I used it for the first time today, setting the finderscope to a terrestrial object during daylight hours.

At about 11PM I did my first nighttime viewing and used a Panoptic 41. The sky was not pitch black as I live a mile to the north of a prairie city and there was not much to look at, but any star I viewed never came completely into focus. I have terrible astigmatism and I saw tiny triangles around any star I looked at. No moon or planets to view so I packed in in for the evening after being quite disappointed with the experience.

Could my scope be having a collimation problem or is it an eyesight issue? I have not had a scope for over 20 years and my old C8's never seemed to do this. I know my vision has gotten worse but I wear glasses which I removed for some of the viewing.

Would appreciate any insight. Wish I had better eyesight as well. LOL!

W

Originally Posted by Wayne Yaskew

i bought a gently used CPC925 and the dealer said he checked it all out prior to shipping some 800 miles. Packaging was excellent and the scope arrived in the original boxes.

I used it for the first time today, setting the finderscope to a terrestrial object during daylight hours.

At about 11PM I did my first nighttime viewing and used a Panoptic 41. The sky was not pitch black as I live a mile to the north of a prairie city and there was not much to look at, but any star I viewed never came completely into focus. I have terrible astigmatism and I saw tiny triangles around any star I looked at. No moon or planets to view so I packed in in for the evening after being quite disappointed with the experience.

Could my scope be having a collimation problem or is it an eyesight issue? I have not had a scope for over 20 years and my old C8's never seemed to do this. I know my vision has gotten worse but I wear glasses which I removed for some of the viewing.

Would appreciate any insight. Wish I had better eyesight as well. LOL!

W

Wayne, I assume you have eyeglasses to correct your astigmatism. Try viewing with your glasses and see if the problem persists. If so, perhaps try a different diagonal if you have one. The triangles sound like pinched optics somewhere. Keep us posted with your efforts.

I’m running a brand new 2” diagonal. I need to get it under real dark skies before I can tell if it’s the scope or me. Would be pretty crappy to have invested all this money abd not have the vision for it. Going to hold off on a Dioptrx till I get a better handle on it. 

Originally Posted by Wayne Yaskew

I’m running a brand new 2” diagonal. I need to get it under real dark skies before I can tell if it’s the scope or me. Would be pretty crappy to have invested all this money and not have the vision for it. Going to hold off on a Dioptrx till I get a better handle on it. 

Wayne, did you try looking through your astigmatism correcting eyeglasses if you have some? The 'triangles' you mentioned do not sound like astigmatism. If the orientation of the triangles stays the same if you rotate your head, then that would seem to indicate it's your eyes.