Posts Made By: Martin Forster

Hello,
I purchased a meade 127ed on amart awhile back and have been learning how to collimate and center the lenses. I have done quite a bit of star testing on this scope and I am puzzled with the results. To begin with the scope does have some astigmastim which rotates 90 degrees from inside and outside focus. I think the images I get of jupiter are fairly good but my infocus high power star images are not what I would like. Stars are not a round ball with diffraction rings around it. Sometimes it is round, then elongated, and sometimes little spikes. I have a 76mm scope that has some astigmatims as well, maybe worse than the meade 127ed but still give a nice high power image of a star, round with a couple of diffraction rings around it. So I would think the Meade should be able to do that as well.
Anyway, I do star tests with and without a diagonal. at powers from 266 to 342x. I have done most of the testing on nights of good seeing, and use different stars, mostly altair and vega. What I see outside of focus is some color within the rings but concentric rings, well defined with a bulleyes in the middle. Inside of focus I don't see the color, and the rings are still fairly well defined but not as defined as the outside of focus rings, but the puzzling part is that the bulleyes is not centered inside of focus, it is off to one side. I have collimated and centered the lenses many times I cant seem to improve the off center bulleyes. If it was a collimation or centering issue wouldnt it show up in both the outside and inside star patterns???

Thanks for your help.

Martin

I have a question regarding my vintage tasco 10te. When I originally purchased the scope a few years back I noticed that one of the spacers was not made of the same material as the other 2. 2 of them looked like metal or tin foil, but the 3rd one was thinner and looked more like paper. I also noticed a bit of coma so I thought well maybe I should replace the one spacer with something more similar to the other metal looking spacers. I couldnt really find anything the same thickness, so I used stamp material for all three and tried varying thicknesses. The coma seemed to only get worse or stay the same. So then I thought why not just try and remove the one spacer and keep the other 2 in their current positions. Well, the coma is almost all the way gone and the little bit of color I was seeing seems to have improved as well. So my question is, why are the lenses performing better with that spacer gone?
Thanks
Martin

Itz,
I think perhaps you should have your eon tested again for a 2nd opinion. I will be happy to test it for you. Be sure to pack it well and send along a money order for 250.00. I will put it through the tests and will be happy to give you my opinion of it.

Martin

Hi,
I had a 80mm vixen Achro, I believe it was model # A80MWT. I had the exact problem you are referring to. I tried a few different things, even took it to a machine shop and they couldn't get the ring off either. What I finally did was, took the cell off of the tube and put the cell in the sun for about 15 or 20 minutes or so. I then carefully used a small screwdriver in the slot of the ring and it loosened right up and came off. I did put a very small amount of penetrating oil on the threads, and I mean a very small amount. I am not sure if the oil actually helped or not. I think heating up the cell is what really did it. If I am not mistaken, there was actually 2 rings. I had tried the loosening before with a screwdriver, even had another guy help me and we both tried with 2 screwdrivers at the same time and it still didnt work. Heating up the cell with the sun was the only thing that actually worked.
Also, after I got the cell apart, I cleaned the lenses very well, just in case any of the penetrating oil got on the lenses.
Contact me if you have any more questions.

Martin

Malcolm,
A friend of mine purchased one of these off of ebay. Legs are really thin and wobbly and the motors have problems. He had to send the controller in 1 week after he purchased it because it didnt work properly. They did send him a new one but I am not impressed with the mount at all.My friend is always fighting with the motors. It looks nice but it is not very good quality. Just my opinion.

Martin