Thanks, Dave. I'm thinking of the Blug, which is installed on the inside of the focuser. With that arraingement, you can't see it in a closed tube unless looking at it's reflection in the primary. I do like Glatter's green laser option, for collimating in daylight. Even more pricey, however. Also I can't wait to try a laser collimator on my binocular viewer attachment- see just how parallel those two optical trains actually are. On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 1:02 PM, Dunn, Dave <David.Dunn@supervalu.com> wrote:
No not with the Barlow. The laser passing through the Barlow makes a large red glow that is hard to see through. What I do is first center the dot on the primary and back into the laser watching the primary mirror (with someone turning the knobs). Then I put the Barlow on and watch from the side. I can see the end of the collimator in the focus tube directly on my 10 and 16 inch scopes. I watch until the center circle is centered around the laser. I will take a look and see if I can see it on the 8" at the star party that I have this Thursday. It is an f/7 so I don't normally need to be that precise.
The Glatter model that I have was bought in around 2000 and is the model that works in both 2" and 1.25" focusers. The 1.25" part of it makes it longer. I think that if it didn't have the part, it would be hard to see.